THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NKW  YORK  •   BOSTON  •   CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


THE 
HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 


BY 
E.  WASHBURN  HOPKINS,  PH.D.,  LL.D, 

Professor  of  Sanskrit  and  Comparative  Philology, 
Yale  University 


gorfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1918 

AU  rights  reserved 


COPYEIGHT,  1918 

BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  November,  1918. 


PREFACE 

In  the  language  of  one  of  the  savage  races  mentioned 
in  this  volume  the  word  religion  means  the  sacred  tree. 
Although  innocent  of  allegory,  yet,  as  in  many  other  regards, 
in  this  definition  the  savage  has  suggested  a  profound 
truth.  For  religion  is,  as  it  were,  a  tree.  Its  roots  lie 
deep  in  the  darkness  of  primeval  earth;  its  growth  must 
precede  its  sheltering  foliage ;  and  its  unripened  fruits  are 
not  pleasant.  Yet,  watered  by  a  living  spring,  it  has  risen 
out  of  a  soil  black  and  even  gruesome,  since  blood  too  has 
fertilized  it,  but  risen  nevertheless  it  has,  slowly  exalting 
itself  heavenward;  and  under  it  sits  nearly  all  mankind. 

In  the  course  of  this  volume  we  shall  study  the  roots  and 
the  higher  growth  of  this  tree,  which  through  its  age- 
long development,  as  any  tree  changes  its  earth-drawn 
sustenance  into  something  more  ethereal,  has  transmuted 
terror  into  reverent  awe,  hunger  into  hope,  lust  into  love. 
We  shall  trace  the  slow  progress  of  such  roots  of  religion 
as  bear  today  the  names  taboo,  fetishism,  totemism;  see 
how  taboo  invested  with  spiritual  power  the  moral  com- 
mand, insured  the  home,  and  made  for  civilization;  how 
fetishism  confirmed  the  thought  that  man  depends  on  a 
spiritual  something,  gave  faith  in  a  power  that  helped,  and 
made  that  power  the  judge  of  right  and  wrong;  how 
totemism  linked  man  in  communion  with  the  divine  and 
in  conjunction  with  seasonal  nature-worship  founded  ritual 
in  the  recurrent  form  necessary  to  religious  stability.  We 
shall  see  in  short  that  the  higher  not  only  is  above  the 
lower  but  that  it  has  ascended  out  of  the  lower.  Savagery 
did  not  give  place  to  civilization  but  developed  into  it,  was 
already  civilization  in  the  germ. 


• 


PREFACE 


So  Egypt  merely  intensified  the  idea  of  communion  when 
it  made  the  soul  the  Osiris  and  burgeoned  into  the  mys- 
ticism which  became  the  mystery  of  human  brotherhood 
in  divine  sonship.  All  these  ideas  remained  conserved  in 
the  higher  growth,  and  others  as  well;  the  belief  that  the 
single  member  might  be  cut  off  for  the  good  of  the  whole, 
that  evil  like  good  had  assumed  a  personal  form,  that  law  was 
established  on  divine  will,  and  even  that  the  moral  was 
more  important  than  the  ritual  law :  "  There  are  the  forty- 
nine  rites  to  be  practised  but  to  be  pure  of  heart  is  better," 
said  one  who  lived  some  centuries  before  our  era. 

Naturally,  therefore,  the  question  arises:  If  religion 
be  all  one  tree,  and  even  the  acorn  an  embryonic  oak,  is 
there  anything  essential  that  makes  the  limb  which  shel- 
ters us  different  from  others,  such  as  the  noble,  if  narrow, 
branch  called  Mohammedanism;  the  broad  bough  of 
Vishnuism,  with  its  devotion  to  a  personal  Lord  and  its 
belief  that  this  Lord  once  lived  on  earth  as  man;  or 
Buddhism,  with  its  gentle  yet  exalted  faith ;  or  Zoroastrian- 
ism,  which  gave  the  world  its  virgin-born  saviour,  archan- 
gels, Ahriman,  and  an  eschatology  still  potent  under  another 
name?  That  a  sacred  tree  may  have  one  Golden  Bough 
is  another  truth  adumbrated  by  savagery,  and  such  a  bough 
is  surely  different  from  others.  The  inquiry  then  is  not 
futile,  though  it  can  here  be  answered  only  by  pointing  out 
salient  distinctions.  Nowhere  in  Zoroastrianism  is  there 
escape  from  the  round  of  ceremonies  and  iteration  of  creed. 
Mohammedanism  sufficed  for  its  time  and  place,  but  its 
fruit  never  ripened  in  the  sun.  Vishnuism  freed  itself 
from  form;  but  its  chief  fruit,  which  was  loving  faith, 
either  became  rotten  with  erotic  mysticism,  a  form  of  decay 
which  once  threatened  the  fruit  of  the  Golden  Bough  also, 
or  shrivelled  into  a  dry  husk :  the  sinner  dies  forgiven  who 
expires  ejaculating  Rama's  Name.  As  the  fruit  of  our 
bough  is  different  from  this,  so  it  is  not  that  of  its  nearest 
spiritual  neighbour,  Buddhism,  either  in  the  primitive 
atheistic  form  or  in  the  nihilistic  idealism  whose  crowning 


PREFACE 

fruit  is  the  Void.  For,  as  this  is  no  real  fruit  but  its  nega- 
tion, Buddhism  is  left  with  nothing  but  the  barren  leaves 
of  rites  and  the  thornless  twigs  of  its  passive  doctrine,  not 
to  injure  others. 

But  the  fruit  of  the  Golden  Bough  is  active  love  not 
passive  pity;  its  very  dogma  is  that  dogma  is  insufficient; 
its  pure  religion  and  undefiled  is  this,  to  serve  others ;  and 
no  bough  can  be  broader :  "  In  every  nation  he  that  fears 
God  and  works  righteousness  is  accepted  of  Him."  In  a 
word,  historically  the  essence  of  the  difference  lies  here: 
All  higher  religions  are  a  complex  of  early  and  late 
growths;  they  all  are  either  intense  or  broad  as  compared 
with  their  origins.  But  one  religion  is  more  intense  and 
broader  than  any  other.  Other  religions  have  been  liberal, 
not  only  Vishnuism  but  Zoroastrianism ;  others  have  been 
intense,  vital,  like  Mohammedanism;  but  only  one  has  con- 
centrated itself  upon  love  of  God  in  man  and  defined  every 
man  as  a  brother.  Christianity  came  not  to  destroy,  but 
to  fulfil,  to  change  Buddha's  negative  kindness  into  actual 
devotion ;  to  enlarge  as  well  as  to  intensify  the  vision  of 
ages.  Virile  as  Mohammedanism,  gentle  as  Hinduism,  cath- 
olic as  Greek  mysticism,  ethical  as  Hebraism ;  it  differs,  shall 
we  say,  in  surpassing;  or  is  that  to  prejudge  the  case? 

Yet  this  Preface  sums  up,  rather  than  prejudges.  But 
in  the  chapters  which  really  lead  to  it,  the  writer  has  sought 
to  present  each  religion  impartially  and  objectively.  His 
purpose  has  been  to  sketch  religions  not  controversially  but 
historically,  to  set  before  his  readers,  who  are  presumed 
to  be  already  fairly  well  informed  but  not  special  stu- 
dents, the  main  outlines  of  religious  phenomena,  as  they 
have  appeared  and  still  appear  in  the  world.  As  such 
readers  will  see,  he  has  been  cramped  by  lack  of  space 
as  well  as  by  personal  limitations.  Despite  the  generosity 
of  the  publishers,  who  have  permitted  this  book  to  outgrow 
its  projected  stature,  it  has  been  difficult  to  compress  so 
great  a  matter  into  so  small  a  compass.  The  author  him- 
self feels  how  curtly  he  has  dismissed  many  phases  on 

3 


PREFACE 


which    he   would   gladly   have   enlarged.     He   has   indeed 
suppressed  almost  as  much  as  he  has  published  and  had 
he  not  been  assured  that  there  was  need  of  a  manual  of 
this  sort  he  would  not  have  ventured  to  crowd  so  many 
problems  into  one  volume.     The  need  was  a  practical  one. 
The  weighty  manual  of  Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye,  Lehrbuch 
der  Rehgionsgeschichte,  not  only  is  a  two-volume  encyclo- 
pedia but  it  shares  the  disadvantage  (together,  it  must  be 
admitted,  with  the  advantage)   of  all  encyclopedic  works 
in  being  written  by  various  hands  without  correlation,  so 
that  what  is  affirmed  here  is  denied  there  and  what  is  said 
there  is  repeated  here.     Nevertheless,  this  will  be  a  stand- 
ard treatise  for  such  students  as  can  read  German  or  may 
prefer  a  French  translation.     Unhappily  it  has  not  yet  been 
done  into  English.     Other  manuals,  some  of  them  admir- 
able, have  been  published,  but  the  authors  have  generally 
confined  themselves  to  the  higher  aspects  of  religion.     Of 
these  the  writer  would  mention  particularly  the  masterly 
exposition  of  the  great  religions  by  Professor  George  F. 
Moore,  whose  History  of  Religions,  in  two  volumes,  one 
of  which  has  already  appeared,  should  be  in  the  hands  of 
all  advanced  students,  and  Professor  George  A.  Barton's 
excellent  synopsis  of  Classical  and  Oriental  religions,  called 
the  Religions  of  the  World,  which  appeared  after  most  of 
the  present  volume  was  written. 

The  skeleton  bibliographies  appended  to  the  chapters  of 
this  History  are  intended  chiefly  to  introduce  the  reader 
to  the  literature  and  put  him  on  the  track  of  other  books. 
No  attempt  has  been  made  to  display  titles,  only  to  men- 
tion a  few  important  works,  arranged  withal  neither  alpha- 
betically nor  chronologically,  but,  in  general,  according  to 
the  precedent  reading  matter  of  each  chapter  or  in  the 
order  in  -which  the  few  volumes  mentioned  may  most 
advantageously  be  read.  These  books  themselves  cite 
others  and  are  often  provided  with  more  extensive  bibliog- 
raphies. 

In  regard  to  the  rendering  of  words  in  the  writer's  own 

4 


PREFACE 

special  field,  it  has  been  his  experience  that  in  works  of 
this  kind  transliteration  without  diacritical  marks  is  prefer- 
able to  that  meticulous  precision  which  attempts  to  render 
foreign  sounds  through  the  inadequate  medium  of  distorted 
English  letters.  This  attempt  becomes  really  absurd  when 
to  dot  a  nasal  conceals  the  fact  that  the  English  nasal  itself 
is  practically  indistinguishable  from  the  lingual  nasal  of 
the  original.  If  any  letters  are  marked,  they  should  be 
the  dentals,  which  in  Sanskrit  are  really  dental  and  are 
pronounced  quite  differently  from  ours.  No  English 
tongue  without  a  special  training  will  ever  pronounce 
Buddha  correctly.  In  respect  of  the  length  of  Sanskrit 
vowels,  the  matter  is  somewhat  other ;  but  on  the  whole  the 
author  prefers  the  modern  Hindu  and  classical  practice  of 
ignoring  vowel-lengths  in  printing.  If  Demeter  (not 
Demeter),  why  Lima?  But  for  those  really  anxious  to 
know  the  length  of  Sanskrit  vowels,  hints  have  been  given 
in  the  index. 

In  conclusion,  the  writer  desires  to  acknowledge  his 
indebtedness  to  several  of  his  colleagues,  without  indeed 
implicating  them  in  any  responsibility  for  what  he  has  per- 
haps inadequately  set  forth.  The  general  editor  of  this 
series,  Professor  E.  Hershey  Sneath,  has  given  the  writer 
various  useful  suggestions  and  references,  especially  in 
the  province  of  European  philosophy.  The  view  that 
Arabia  did  not  belch  forth  Semites  at  intervals  of  half-mil- 
lenniums is  of  course  (as  Semitic  scholars  will  know) 
that  of  Professor  Albert  T.  Clay.  A  lecture  on  Hebrew 
mysticism  by  Professor  Frank  C.  Porter  suggested  the 
distinction  made  between  classes  of  Hebrew  prophets. 
Professor  Benj.  W.  Bacon  has  kindly  revised  the  notes  on 
the  dates  of  New  Testament  writings.  From  his  book, 
mentioned  but  not  explicitly  as  the  source,  was  taken  the 
phrase  which  points  the  distinction  between  the  doctrine 
of  Jesus  and  the  doctrine  about  Jesus.  An  unintended 
reticence,  noticed  too  late,  as  to  the  names  of  two  distin- 
guished scholars  may  be  rectified  here.  The  '*  excellent 

5 


PREFACE 

authority"  cited  on  page  371  is  the  writer's  friend  and 
colleague,  Professor  A.  V.  W.  Jackson.  The  other  eminent 
scholar,  to  whom  reference  is  made  on  page  550,  is  the 
well-known  writer  on  Roman  institutions,  Dr.  W.  Warde 
Fowler. 

New  Haven, 
September  8,  1918. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    DEFINITIONS,   SOURCES,   CLASSIFICATIONS  OF  RE- 
LIGIONS        i 

II    GENERAL   CHARACTERISTICS   OF   PRIMITIVE   RELI- 
GIONS      14 

III  AFRICAN  RELIGIONS — i,  SPIRIT-LORE    ....     24 

2,  FETISH  AND  IDOL 35 

IV  RELIGION  OF  THE  AINUS  AND  SHAMANS  ....     46 
V    POLYNESIAN  RELIGIONS  —  i,  SPIRITS,  MYTHS  .     .     59 

2,  MANA  AND  TABOO 67 

VI    RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA 75 

VII    RELIGIONS    OF    MEXICO,    CENTRAL    AND    SOUTH 

AMERICA 94 

VIII    RELIGION  OF  THE  CELTS 120 

IX    RELIGION  OF  THE  SLAVIC  PEOPLES 138 

X    RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS 149 

XI    RELIGIONS    OF     INDIA.    FROM     THE    VEDAS    TO 

BUDDHA 170 

XII    BUDDHISM 183 

XIII  HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS 205 

XIV  RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA.    PRE-CONFUCIAN  RELIGION  224 
XV    CONFUCIUS,  LAO-TSE,  TAOISM 249 

XVI  RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN,  SHINTOISM  AND  BUDDHISM  275 

XVII    THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT 309 

XVIII  BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  ....  344 

XIX      ZOROASTRIANISM 37! 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PACT 

XX    THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL 414 

XXI    THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED 452 

XXII    GREEK  RELIGION 483 

XXIII  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS 5J6 

XXIV  THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY    .     .  552 


EDITOR'S  PROSPECTUS 

One  of  the  notable  developments  of  modern  scholarship  is 
an  increasing  interest  in  the  scientific  study  of  religion.  It 
is  safe  to  say  that  never  before  has  religion  been  made  the 
subject  of  such  careful  and  extended  investigation  as  during 
the  last  three  decades.  History,  anthropology,  psychology, 
archaeology,  comparative  religion,  and  sociology  have  been 
drawn  upon  to  aid  in  the 'determination  and  interpretation 
of  the  facts  of  religious  experience;  —  each  of  them  mak- 
ing a  substantial  contribution  toward  this  important  end. 
Indeed !  during  this  period  a  new  science,  the  psychology  of 
religion,  has  come  into  being,  and  already  a  comparatively 
large  literature  on  this  subject  has  been  developed.  Philos- 
ophy, also,  has  felt  the  impulse  of  this  interest,  and,  in  the 
more  speculative  fields  of  religious  scholarship,  a  philosophy 
of  religion  is  rapidly  supplanting  dogmatic  theology  in  the 
effort  to  furnish  an  ultimate  interpretation  of  the  phenomena 
of  religious  consciousness.  Furthermore,  application  of  the 
historical  method  to  the  study  of  Old  and  New  Testament 
Literature  has  contributed  toward  a  much  better  under- 
standing of  the  Bible,  and  to  a  more  intelligent  appreciation, 
and  a  higher  valuation,  of  the  Christian  religion. 

Further  interest  in  religion  is  manifest  in  the  widespread 
movement  in  behalf  of  systematic  religious  education.  Bi- 
ology, genetic  and  child  psychology,  the  psychology  of  ado- 
lescence, and  experimental  pedagogy,  are  rendering  valu- 
able aid  in  the  organization  and  application  of  curricula  in 
this  important  field.  Thus  far  elementary  and  secondary 
religious  education  has  received  more  attention  than  reli- 
gious education  in  the  college.  The  time  seems  ripe  for 
more  adequate  education  along  these  lines  in  colleges  and 
universities.  For  this  purpose  a  special  literature  in  the 
history,  psychology  and  philosophy  of  religion,  and  in  Old 
and  New  Testament  Interpretation  is  necessary.  The  "  Re- 


EDITOR'S  PROSPECTUS 

ligious  Science  and  Literature  Series  "  is  specially  designed 
to  meet  this  need.  Each  book  of  the  Series  is  written  by  a 
well-known  specialist,  and  is  prepared  with  reference  to 
class-room  work.  The  Series  includes  the  following  vol-» 
umes: 

THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGION  (Ready) 

E.  Washburn  Hopkins,  Ph.D.,  LL.D., 

Professor  of  Sanskrit  and  Comparative  Philology,  Yale  Uni- 
versity 

PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION  (In  preparation) 

Luther  A.  Weigle,  Ph.D., 
Professor  of  Christian  Nurture,  Yale  University 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  (In  preparation) 

Douglas  Clyde  Macintosh,  Ph.D., 

Professor  of  Systematic  Theology,  Yale  University 

HISTORY  AND  LITERATURE  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT    (In  preparation) 
Charles  Cutler  Torrey,  Ph.D.,  D.D., 
Professor  of  Semitic  Languages,  Yale  University 

HISTORY  OF  THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  (Ready) 

George  A.  Barton,  Ph.D., 

Professor  of  Biblical  Literature  and  Semitic  Languages,  Bryn 
Mawr  College 

HISTORY  AND  LITERATURE  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT   (In  preparation) 
Henry  Thatcher  Fowler,  Ph.D., 

Professor  of  Biblical  Literature  and  History,  Brown  University 

LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS  (In  preparation) 

Edward  Increase  Bosworth,  D.D., 

Professor  of  New  Testament  Language  and  Literature,  and  Dean 
of  Oberlin  Seminary 

A  BOOK  ABOUT  THE  ENGLISH  BIBLE  (In  press) 

Josiah  H.  Penniman,  Ph.D.,  LL.D., 

Professor  of  English  Literature  and  Vice-provost  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania 

HISTORY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION  (In  preparation) 

John  Winthrop  Platner,  D.D., 

Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History,  Andover  Theological  Semi- 
nary 

E.  HERSHEY  SNEATH. 
Yale  University. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

CHAPTER  ONE 

DEFINITIONS,   SOURCES  AND   CLASSIFICATIONS   OF   RELIGIONS 

A  CERTAIN  Professor  of  Rhetoric  at  Milan,  Augustine  by 
name,  seeking  to  define  time,  said:  "Ask  me,  and  I  do 
not  know;  ask  me  not,  and  I  know."  Every  one  knows 
time,  feels  conscious  of  it,  recognizes  that  man  exists  in 
time.  Yet  who  can  define  it  properly,  or  say  that  it  ever 
began  or  never  began?  So  it  is  with  religion.  We  are 
conscious  of  it,  we  feel  that  it  exists  and  that  we  exist  as 
religious  beings;  and  each  of  us  may  know  what  his  own 
religion  is.  Yet  who  can  say  of  religion  in  general  that  it 
is  this  or  that,  and  who  would  venture  to  assert  that  his 
own  religion  is  the  only  religion?  To  take  a  concrete  ex- 
ample, what  shall  we  say  of  a  moral  atheist  and  of  an 
immoral  theist,  are  they  religious  or  irreligious? 

Nevertheless,  we  must,  as  students  of  religion,  attempt 
some  definition  of  what  we  are  to  study,  and  for  the  pur- 
poses of  religious  history  this  definition  must  exclude  par- 
ticulars and  include  what  is  common  to  all  the  religions  we 
are  to  investigate.  Now  what  is  common  to  all  religions  is 
belief  in  a  superhuman  power  and  an  adjustment  of  human 
activities  to  the  requirements  of  that  power,  such  an  adjust- 
ment as  may  enable  the  individual  believer  to  exist  more 
happily.  As  physical  life  must  be  adjusted  to  its  environ- 
ment, so  mental  life  must  be  adjusted,  and  this  adjustment 
is  expressed  by  the  activities  exercised  in  view  of  the  re- 
ligious belief.  Our  definition  then  must  imply  belief,  but  it 
should  also  emphasize  the  activity,  mental  and  physical, 
which  results  from  that  belief. 


2  THiv  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

On  the  other  hand,  we  ought  not  to  intrude  into  the  defi- 

nition any  implication  or  expression  of  the  answer  to  the 

query  whether  man  has  an  innate  religious  faculty  or  merely 

impressions  that  produce  that  faculty,  and  we  may  not  even 

imply  in  our  definition  that  religion  necessitates  a  belief  in 

spiritual  powers,  because  such  belief  is  not  essential.     To 

put  into  the  definition  what  cannot  be  omitted  and  to  omit 

what  ought  not  to  be  put  in  :     Religion  is  Squaring  human 

life  with  superhuman  life.     In  the  effort  to  adjust  oneself 

to  superhuman  life,  belief  is  assumed,  but  the  definition 

rather  stresses  that  adjustment  without  which  religion  be- 

comes pretence  or  hypocrisy.    As  to  belief  in  a  superhuman 

power,  even  Positivism,  with  its  "  veneration  for  the  power 

which  exercises  a  dominant  influence  over  life"  (Frederic 

Harrison's   definition  of   religion),   really  reveres  a  non- 

material,  if  not  spiritual  power,  inasmuch  as  the  power  vene- 

rated cannot  be  explained  in  terms  of  matter  or  material 

force  and  is  beyond  the  control  of  humanity,  while  directing 

it.     And  so  too  Buddhism,  which  has  been  a  thorn  in  the 

flesh  of  those  who  have  tried  to  make  it  fit  into  their  more 

elaborate  definitions  of  religion,  is  included  as  a  real  re- 

ligion in  this  definition,  for  Karma  is  a  superhuman  power 

which  lies  outside  of  sense-experience.1 

It  may  perhaps  be  objected  that  such  a  definition  as  has 
been  proposed  is  too  cold  or  too  vague  and  does  not  cor- 
respond to  what  we  feel  religion  should  be;  it  ought  to 
contain  something  which  implies  a  belief  in  the  immortality 
of  the  soul,  in  God,  and  in  our  feeling  of  dependence  on 
him.  But  this  is  exactly  what  has  destroyed  the  value  of 
many  famous  definitions  of  religion,  which  have  substituted 
what  men  think  ought  to  be  the  hall-mark  of  religion  for 
that  which  is  actually  found  to  be  essential.  For  in  adopt- 


havWh"tRghH^Ud?ha  -Was^  a"at¥ist»  Tiele  represents  Buddhism  as 
haying  Buddha  for  its  God/'  simply  because  Tiele's  definition  re- 
quires a  belief  in  God  as  the  base  of  religion.  And  Sir  Monier- 

T£ri°nt-,ediwith  the  same  Problem  as  to  the  status  of 
,  boldly  declared  that  Buddhism  is  no  religion  at  all! 


DEFINITIONS  3 

ing  any  such  definition  we  drop  back  into  the  attitude  of 
those  who  make  a  distinction  between  the  false  and  the  true, 
as  they  understand  it,  the  test  of  real  religion;  who  say,  or 
think,  that  what  they  themselves  believe  is  religion  and  what 
they  do  not  believe  is  superstition. 

Yet  the  definitions  of  religion  furnished  by  others  are  of 
value  to  the  student,  who  ought  not  to  be  without  such 
historical  background  and  to  whom  it  is  important  to  know 
what  other  investigators  of  religion  mean  when  they  use 
that  word.  Even  to  glance  at  the  interpretation  of  religion 
conveyed  by  philology  is  not  a  waste  of  time. 

To  begin  with  some  of  these  unconscious  revelations  given 
by  man's  crystallized  thought,  the  Greek  sebas  and  the  Latin 
reverentia  imply  a  theory  of  religious  origins  still  taught  in 
our  schools.  Sebas  is  "  shrinking  "  and  reverentia  is  "  ti- 
midity," and  before  reverentia  became  piety  or  sebas  had 
formed  its  child  eusebeia,  these  were  the  earliest  verbal 
equivalents  of  religion.  The  word  religion  itself  was  de- 
fined by  the  later  Romans  as  justitia  adversus  deos.  Cicero 
derived  it  from  relego,  implying  a  careful  knowledge  of  the 
needs  of  the  gods  —  religentem  esse  oportet  religiosum  nefas 
(be  religious  but  not  superstitious).  Others  connected 
the  word  with  lex,  law,  and  religo,  implying  an  obligation. 
Earlier  still  is  the  notion  of  religion  furnished  by  Plato  in 
the  mocking  challenge  of  the  Euthyphro:  "  Is  not  religion 
perhaps  merely  a  science  of  begging  and  getting?"  This 
last  explanation  of  religion  takes  us  direct  to  the  modern 
theory  of  Lyall,1  who  regards  the  principle  of  do  ut  des  as 
the  "  foundation  of  natural  religion."  Andrew  Lang  has 
remarked  that  this  is  virtually  the  definition  of  Frazer,  who 
makes  religion  "  a  propitiation  or  conciliation  of  powers  su- 
perior to  man."  2 

The  definition  of  Seneca,  who  says  that  "  to  know  God 
and  imitate  him  "  is  religion,  brings  us  to  the  practical  diffi- 

1  Sir  A.  C.  Lyall,  Asiatic  Studies,  London,  1899,  ii,  p.  172. 

2  Andrew  Lang,  Magic  and  Religion,  London,  1901,  p.  59. 


4  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

culty  already  discussed.  This  admirable  definition  is  rather 
a  precept  than  a  definition;  it  is  not  what  religion  is  but 
what  it  should  be.  So  with  definitions  which  make  religion 
imply  the  love  of  God,  the  command  of  conscience,  the  feel- 
ing of  trust  in  God,  etc.  From  the  point  of  view  of  our 
study,  Schleiermacher's  "  consciousness  of  contact  between 
the  soul  and  the  universe,"  though  a  noble  definition  of  re- 
ligion, is  too  noble;  it  does  not  apply  to  the  religion  of 
savages.  Bishop  Butler's  famous  definition,  "  Religion  is 
the  belief  in  one  God  or  Creator  and  Moral  Governor  of 
the  world  and  in  a  future  state  of  retribution,"  would  today 
exclude  a  host  of  religious  civilized  people  of  his  own 
church,  as  it  even  then  excluded  hosts  who  were  not  be- 
lievers in  his  religion.  The  same  may  be  said  of  James 
Martineau's  "  Religion  is  a  belief  in  an  everlasting  God, 
that  is,  a  divine  mind  and  will  ruling  the  universe  and  hold- 
ing moral  relations  with  mankind."  Noticeable  is  it  that 
these  theologians  regard  religion  as  wholly  an  intellectual 
conviction,  with  not  a  word  to  imply  that  man  does  anything 
as  part  of  his  religion.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  to  be  on 
guard  just  as  carefully  against  those  who  do  not  regard 
intelligence  but  feeling  as  the  one  and  only  thing  in  reli- 
gion. "  The  mark  of  real  religion,"  says  Pfleiderer,  "  is 
sentiment."  Tiele,  a  professed  student  of  religion  but  more 
a  theologian,  agrees  with  Pfleiderer;  while  Reville  goes  so 
far  as  to  make  this  sentiment  love;  but  it  is  clear  that  here 
also  "  real  religion  "  is  merely  the  author's  religion.  Tiele, 
however,  resolves  religion  into  "  words  and  deeds,"  and  that 
is  an  advance  on  the  definition  given  by  the  philosophers 
and  theologians  cited  above.1 

So,  to  define  religion  as  the  "  determination  of  human  life 
by  the  sentiment  of  a  bond  uniting  the  human  mind  to  that 
mysterious  mind  whose  domination  of  the  world  and  of 
itself  it  recognizes  and  to  whom  it  delights  in  feeling  itself 

1  Tiele,  Elements  of  Religion,  London,  1877,  makes  words  and 
deeds  the  expression  of  conceptions  and  emotions,  but  he  takes 
emotion  as  the  starting-point. 


DEFINITIONS  5 

united  "  (Reville)  is  much  more  than  can  be  said  of  many 
religions,  and  the  same  fault  vitiates  Max  Miiller's  other- 
wise defective  definition  of  religion  as  "  a  longing  after  the 
infinite  "  and  "  a  mental  faculty  which  enables  man  to  ap- 
prehend the  infinite,"  the  latter  being  only  a  little  more 
incredible  than  the  former,  as  was  felt  by  the  author  him- 
self.1 

From  the  philosophers  we  do  indeed  get  one  definition 
that  might  answer  for  every  phase  of  belief.  This  is  Ed- 
ward Caird's,  as  given  in  a  popular  article,2  when  he  says 
that  "  a  man's  religion  is  the  expression  of  his  summed  up 
meaning  and  the  purport  of  his  whole  consciousness  of 
things  " ;  but  this  implies  merely  a  mental  state  and  attitude 
toward  life  and  does  not  imply  the  recognition  of  anything 
superhuman  or  spiritual,  the  one  essential  of  religion  differ- 
entiating it  from  philosophy,  which  may  or  may  not  recog- 
nize a  superhuman  element  One  may  of  course  arbitrarily 
define  religion  as  being  devoid  of  such  an  element,  just  as  a 
painter  may  say  that  art  is  his  religion  or  Heine  that  blaue 
Augen  are  his  heaven ;  but  he  is  simply  using  a  well-known 
conception  in  an  extraordinary  manner.  Virtually  equiva- 
lent to  Reville's  definition  is  a  recent  attempt  to  define  re- 
ligion psychologically  as  "  the  endeavour  to  secure  the  recog- 
nition of  socially  recognized  values  through  specific  actions 
that  are  believed  to  evoke  some  agency  different  from  the 
ordinary  ego  of  the  individual,  or  from  other  merely  human 
beings,  and  that  imply  a  feeling  of  dependence  upon  this 
agency."  3 

On  the  whole,  the  anthropologists  have  defined  religion  in 
better  terms  than  have  the  students  of  comparative  religion. 
They  at  least  know  that  the  Andaman  Islander  does  not  ap- 
prehend the  infinite  or  feel  himself  delightfully  united  to  a 

1  In  his   Giffprd  Lectures  of   1891,  Miiller  attempted  to  explain 
away  the  definition  given  in  those  of  1880. 

2  Metaphysical  Magazine,  June,  1902. 

8  See  W.  K.  Wright  in  the  American  Journal  of  Theology,  July, 
P.  385*. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

mysterious  mind.  But  the  trouble  with  the  definitions  of 
the  anthropologists  is  that  each  reflects  a  one-sided  theory. 
This  js  the  case  with  E.  B.  Tylor's  "  belief  in  spiritual  be- 
ings," while  as  a  definition  it  ignores  activities  set  in  motion 
by  belief.  Mere  belief  is  not  religion.  One  may  believe 
in  the  moon  without  having  religious  relations  with  the 
moon,  and  so  one  may  believe  in  spirits  without  their  mak- 
ing part  of  one's  religion.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
Saussaye  defines  religion  as  the  "  belief  in  superhuman 
powers  and  worship  of  them,"  there  is  a  vitiating  error  in 
the  assumption  that  religion  implies  worship,  for  there  may 
be  no  worship  and  yet  a  change  of  conduct  may  be  religious, 
be,  in  fact,  the  sole  outer  activity  resulting  from  the  reli- 
gious belief.1  Finally  it  may  be  said  of  Arnold's  memorable 
dictum  (religion  is  "morality  touched  with  emotion")  that 
from  an  historical  or  comparative  point  of  view  it  is  mean- 
ingless. Some  religions  are  immoral,  as  Arnold  would  de- 
fine morality,  while  some  are  unmoral,  or  have  no  obvious 
connection  with  morality. 

*  Thus  the  history  of  religion  is  simply  the  story  of  how 
different  communities  have  succeeded  in  adjusting  their 
lives  to  what  they  have  believed  to  be  a  living  power,  not 
identical  with  their  own  power  but  superhuman,  even  if 
they  themselves  may  expect  eventually,  when  they  too  have 
become  more  than  human,  to  obtain  a  similar  power  or 
become  identified  with  it  They  may  even  expect  as  human 
beings  to  control  this  power,  but  it  is  not  a  power  they 
themselves  possess  in  the  same  degree  as  does  the  religious 
object.  We  make  here,  provisionally,  no  distinction  between 
magic  and  religion,  for,  as  will  be  seen,  the  two  are  not  abso- 
lutely separate.  They  are,  in  fact,  closely  inter-related. 
Both  at  least  respect  a  superhuman  power.  It  is,  moreover 
a  living  power.  The  heathen  in  his  blindness  bows  down  to 
wood  and  stone,  but  to  him  they  are  not  mere  wood  and  stone. 

i  This  is  ignored  by  the  French  sociologists.  Thus  M.  Durkheim 
lefmes  religious  phenomena  as  croyances  obligators  connexes  de 
pratigues  defines  (i.e.,  of  taboo,  etc.),  and  religion  as  a  unified  sys- 
tem oi  beliefs  and  practices  (see  below). 


SOURCES  7 

SOURCES   AND    NATURE  OF  THE   EVIDENCE 

Our  present  knowledge  of  religious  phenomena  is  based 
upon  various  bodies  of  evidence,  none  of  them  unimpeach- 
able. Since  it  is  quite  as  important  to  know  the  value  of 
the  evidence  as  to  be  acquainted  with  the  source  and  the 
matter  itself,  it  will  be  well  to  range  the  sources  in  an 
ascending  scale  according  to  their  comparative  worth. 

First.  The  linguistic  evidence.  Although,  as  in  the  ex- 
ample given  from  the  Greek  sebas,  linguistic  evidence  may 
occasionally  be  of  considerable  value,  yet  it  is  more  likely 
to  lead  astray  than  to  lead  aright.  It  is  not  evidence  that 
can  be  accepted,  even  on  the  authority  of  an  expert,  without 
great  reserve.  Especially  is  etymological  evidence  of  ques- 
tionable validity.  It  is  liable  to  be  overthrown  at  any  time 
and  is  never  much  more  than  learned  guesswork.  Theories 
based  on  the  identity  of  Yahweh  with  a  word  meaning 
"  hurrah,"  or  on  the  common  origin  of  god-names  in  differ- 
ent branches  even  of  the  same  race  may  be  true,  but  they 
are  often  as  lacking  in  truth  as  they  are  commonly  full  of 
ingenuity.  Many  of  them  are  like  a  certain  theory  of  the 
identity  of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  races,  based  on  the  self- 
evident  fact  that  Abraham  is  "  a  Brahman." 

Another  point  in  regard  to  linguistic  evidence  is  often 
overlooked.  This  is  that  even  when  the  derivation  of  a 
word  is  fairly  certain,  the  etymology  itself  may  mislead  us, 
because  words  change  from  their  etymological  meaning  and 
the  concept  of  a  divinity  which  appears  to  be  revealed  by  a 
true  derivation  may  not  be  at  all  the  concept  of  the  divinity 
as  it  was  when  the  particular  word  was  applied  as  a  name 
to  the  divinity.  For  example,  deus  in  Latin  no  more  means 
"  shining  "  than  god  in  English  means  "  invoked,"  although 
the  etymology  of  deus  and  of  god  point  to  these  conceptions, 
respectively,  as  the  meaning  back  of  the  historical  words. 
The  past  meaning  is  not  often  the  present  meaning  and  the 
two  must  be  carefully  distinguished.  Further,  the  concept 
of  any  divinity,  however  named,  is  from  its  inception  condi- 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

tioned  by  the  mental  and  social  status  of  the  community.  A 
day  called  Thursday  means  the  day  of  Thor  and  thor  is 
thunder,  but  for  all  that  we  do  not  recognize  a  "  day  of 
Thor  "  or  a  "  day  of  thunder,"  and  no  more  did  the  historic 
Germans  worship  a  god  thunder.  In  fact,  far  from  being 
a  mere  noise  in  the  sky,  Thor  was  a  heavenly  man  with  a 
decent  family  of  his  own  and  with  intimate  relations  with 
his  clan  on  earth.  To  interpret  him  in  any  historical  period 
as  mere  sound  would  be  an  unsound  interpretation  (to  put 
an  old  pun  to  a  new  use),  and  so,  generally,  the  names  of 
gods  do  not  really  reflect  the  nature  of  gods  at  any  historical 
period,  and  they  may  never  have  done  so.  For  back  of 
the  time  we  know  the  god  there  is  only  the  word ;  but  how 
it  was  applied  we  cannot  tell,  whether  to  designate  a  god, 
a  devil,  or  a  sound  per  se  (in  the  case  of  Thor),  for  we 
know  nothing  as  to  the  worship  of  this  now  unknown 
being. 

Second.  Archaeological  evidence.  Testimony  of  the 
monuments  of  (a)  the  neolithic  age,  and  (b)  of  later  times. 
Meagre  and  uncertain  is  the  earliest  evidence  of  religion. 
We  learn  that  skulls  were  trepanned  and  because  savages  now 
trepan  in  order  to  let  out  the  soul,  therefore  (it  is  argued) 
the  men  of  neolithic  times  believed  in  soul.  For  the  same 
reason  they  are  thought  to  have  believed  in  a  future  life. 
A  nascent  fetishism  has  also  been  predicated  of  neolithic 
man  because  of  the  objects  found  buried  with  his  remains, 
which  to  others  seem  proof  of  a  belief  in  a  future  life. 
The  testimony,  such  as  it  is,  is  the  more  uncertain  because  of 
the  uncertainty  when  the  bronze  age,  as  compared  with  the 
neolithic  age,  begins.  But  it  is  not  of  moment  when  the  ani- 
mal man  began  to  be  religious,  especially  since  we  can  trace 
the  religious  elements  as  far  back  as  the  bronze  age.  The 
objects  buried  with  the  corpse  may  show  that  at  this  period 
men  believed  in  a  happy  future  life  of  eating  and  drinking, 
when  children  would  need  their  playthings  and  men  their 
weapons  and  customary  implements.  The  cave-pictures  of 
France  may  point  to  a  prehistoric  magical  use  of  ancient 


SOURCES  9 

figures.  Prehistoric  stone  circles  may  be  of  religious  sig- 
nificance, but  they  may  be  without  religious  bearing. 

Third.  The  testimony  of  ancient  writers.  Here  we 
must  distinguish  between  descriptions  of  own  religions  and 
appraisals  of  foreign  religions.  Owing  to  the  fact  that 
the  writers  who  described  the  religions  of  others  were  gen- 
erally ignorant  of  them  or  prejudiced  and  as  a  rule  got  all 
their  information  at  second  hand,  the  value  of  this  testimony 
is  extremely  variable;  often  it  is  most  valuable  when  the 
author  is  not  trying  to  describe  religion  at  all  but,  by  acci- 
dent, as  it  were,  lets  out  a  secret  of  religion  known  not  even 
to  himself.  The  most  obvious  fault  in  this  class  of  evi- 
dence, whether  furnished  by  native  or  foreigner,  is  its  de- 
ficiency. Whole  chapters  of  religion  remain  unnoticed, 
either  because  the  author  is  ignorant  or  because  he  chooses 
to  ignore  certain  features.  Homer,  though  a  Greek,  gives 
but  a  restricted  view  of  Greek  religion;  therefore  a  Greek 
religion  of  the  Homeric  age  based  only  on  Homer  is  incor- 
rect. Tacitus  gives  a  foreigner's  appraisement  of  the  reli- 
gion of  the  ancient  Germans;  but  it  is  by  no  means  to  be 
taken  as  exhaustive  or  even  correct  as  far  as  it  goes.  The 
testimony  of  literature  anyway,  it  must  be  remembered,  is 
only  the  testimony  of  those  who  were  able  to  compose,  to 
leave  essays  of  lasting  worth.  Thus  almost  all  the  testimony 
of  this  sort  comes  from  the  upper  intellectual  stratum  and 
gives  a  one-sided  knpression.  In  all  such  testimony  we 
learn  more  about  the  higher  side  of  religion,  less  about  the 
lower ;  more  of  gods,  less  of  goblins.  Homer  shows  us  the 
court-beauties  of  heaven.  The  poets  of  the  Rig  Veda  are 
concerned  less  with  demonology  than  with  the  worship  of 
the  great  gods.  But  all  the  time,  both  in  Greece  and  in 
India,  the  lower  cult  was  there;  only  it  is  not  recorded  by 
the  poets. 

Fourth.  Ethnography.  From  the  study  of  race-pecul- 
iarities by  trained  modern  observers  is  to  be  obtained  the 
most  valuable  evidence  in  regard  to  religious  phenomena 
in  our  own  day.  But,  ideal  as  this  testimony  might  be,  much 


!0  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

of  it  is  vitiated  by  the  fact  that  the  observer  is  not  trained; 
much,   by  the    fact  that   he  is   trained  to   see   everything 
through  a  theory  of  religious  origins,  which  influences  his 
testimony.     It  does  not  make  a  real  difference  whether  one 
be  an  untrained  missionary  or  a  prejudiced  scientist      All 
this  testimony  has  to  be  sifted  with  great  care  and  even 
then  some  of  it  is  entirely  worthless.     Taken  as  a  whole 
however,  of  course  the  body  of  material  is  of  inestimable 
worth.     Fortunately  we  do  not  have  to  depend  on  isolated 
or  individual  observation  and  generally  the  reports  are  mu- 
tually corrective.     It  is  only  necessary  to  warn  the  student 
against  trusting  too  entirely  the  word  of  any  one  authority 
however  honest  and  learned  he  may  be.     This  source  con- 
tains all  the  data  collected  by  comparative  ethnography,  in- 
cluding folk-lore  and  the  translations  of  original  hymns  and 
legends. 

CLASSIFICATION   OF   RELIGIONS 

Attempts  to  classify  religions  have  all  failed,  because 
there  are  no  clear  lines  of  demarcation  between  them. 
Classifications  suggested  are,  for  example,  natural  and  re- 
demptive, natural  and  moral,  tribal,  national,  and  univer- 
sal. But  natural  and  ethical  religions  cannot  be  sharply 
sundered,  and  the  traits  of  one  race  reappear  in  another. 
Unsatisfactory  is  even  the  minuteness  of  De  la  Grasserie,' 
who  has  made  twenty-two  divisions  of  religions.1  The  clas- 
sification of  Reville,  into  polytheistic,  monotheistic,  national, 
and  nomistic  religions,  indicates,  at  best,  striking  points  of 
difference  between  important  groups.  Of  all  the  distinc- 
tions suggested,  those  between  egoistic  and  altruistic  and 
natural  and  ethical  are  perhaps  the  worst,  yet  even  national 
and  nomistic  are  terms  largely  exchangeable.  We  shall  con- 
sider religions  solely  as  expressions  of  various  stages  of 
culture  found  among  various  races. 

Yet  even  in  the  loosest  grouping  we  must  guard  against 
one  error,  the  implication  of  an  assumed  order  of  progres- 

1  Compare  Jastrow,  Study  of  Religion,  New  York,  1901,  p.  95. 


CLASSIFICATION  II 

sion.  For  example,  if  animism  be  discussed  before  natur- 
ism,  the  implication  is  that  the  former  is  more  primitive. 
Again,  retrogression  in  religion  must  be  reckoned  with.  A 
religion  may  have  fallen  from  its  former  estate  and  appear 
as  mere  devil-worship,  whereas  in  fact  it  is  only  a  higher 
religion  that  has  become  decadent.  Also  chance  evidence 
may  lead  to  error.  For  example,  animism  has  been  predi- 
cated as  the  "  earliest  form  "  of  religion  on  the  ground  that 
the  trepanned  skull  of  prehistoric  man  indicates  a  belief 
in  soul  or  spirit.  But  what  if,  though  improbable,  the 
earliest  religion  was  worship  of  the  sun  or  moon?  No 
trace  might  have  been  left  of  this  belief,  whereas  the  skull 
has  remained. 

One  of  the  oldest  classifications  of  religions  is  that  which 
separates  them  all  into  orthodox  and  heterodox.  But  a 
little  study  will  show  that  no  religion  is  altogether  hetero- 
dox. Yet  to  realize  this  the  study  is  necessary  and  it  must 
be  pursued  with  the  Buddhist's  "  open  mind."  If  we  take 
up  the  superstitions  that  have  grouped  themselves  about  the 
practice  of  taboo,  for  instance,  only  to  find  them  risible  or 
disgusting,  we  shall  lose  their  ethical  and  religious  bearing. 
Difficult  as  it  is,  we  must  endeavour  rather  to  put  ourselves 
in  the  position  of  the  taboo-fearing  savage  and  see  what 
this  brother  intended  and  accomplished.  God  gave  him  no 
Moses,  but  he  evolved  some  of  the  ten  commandments ;  his 
taboos  were  his  tables  of  the  law. 

Especially  is  this  attitude  desirable  in  the  study  of  higher 
religions,  where  heterodoxy  almost  blends  with  orthodoxy. 
We  must  examine  not  with  hostility  but  with  sympathetic 
interest  the  reason  why  the  Hindu  is  almost  but  not  quite 
persuaded.  And  as  with  religions,  so  with  theories  of  re- 
ligion. Here  care  and  candor  are  needed.  It  is  careless 
to  assert  that  there  is  no  race  without  religion  before  defin- 
ing religion  and  examining  all  races.  It  is  careless  to  in- 
duce from  the  data  of  one  field  that  the  Semitic  theory  of 
sacrifice  explains  all  sacrifice.  Candor  here,  too,  implies 
toleration,  to  listen  hopeful  of  gain  to  all  theories,  to  dub 


12  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

no  school  or  scholar  "all  wrong."  All  schools  see  some 
truth ;  no  sober  scholar  is  all  wrong.  Animist  and  naturist 
may  learn  much  from  each  other ;  worshippers  of  the  Year- 
demon  may  reap  a  harvest  from  the  devotees  of  ghosts; 
even  the  mythologist  and  the  anthropologist,  not  to  speak 
of  the  sociologist,  might  conceivably  lie  down  together,  not 
only  in  safety  but  to  their  mutual  advantage. 

Theories  in  regard  to  religious  phenomena  are  very  old. 
Six  or  seven  hundred  years  before  Christ,  the  Hindus  were 
already  arguing  whether  their  chief  devil  had  been  an  actual 
person  or  was  merely  a  natural  phenomenon.  A  few  cen- 
turies later  a  Hindu  materialist  defended  the  opinion  (main- 
tained two  thousand  years  later  by  Toland),1  that  religion 
was  the  creation  of  selfish  priests.  Others  argued  that  it 
was  a  gift  of  God.  But  neither  with  such  theories  nor  with 
others  has  the  history  of  religions  to  do,  except  as  they 
involve  or  ignore  important  data.  It  has  not  to  establish 
any  theory  of  the  origin  of  religion  but  to  exhibit  the  facts 
on  which  different  theories  have  been  built.  Thus  we  shall 
not  discuss  as  theories  Mannhardt's  hypothesis  of  religion 
originating  in  the  cult  of  vegetation-spirits,  nor  Robertson 
Smith's  view  that  sacrifice  begins  as  a  communion-feast,  nor 
Usener's  idea  that  all  gods  are  at  first  functional  powers, 
nor  Sir  J.  G.  Frazer's  ever-changing  interpretation  of  totem- 
ism  and  his  contention  that  redemption  begins  with  the 
regicide,  though  we  shall  have  occasion  to  refer  to  them  all. 
For  the  same  reason  it  will  be  unnecessary  to  examine  the 
theory  of  Messrs.  Durkheim  and  Mauss  that  the  collective 
rather  than  the  individual  mind  originates  religion,  a  theory 
which  practically  maintains  that  it  is  impossible  to  under- 
stand any  religion  other  than  that  of  the  human  group  in 
which  each  is  born;  which  group  has  a  consciousness  so 
unique  that  no  outsider  can  do  more  than  register  its  ob- 
jective phenomena.  Hence  modern  French  sociologists  dis- 
approve of  all  attempts  to  appreciate  sympathetically  any 

1  John    Toland,     Christianity    not    Mysterious,    London,     1696; 
Jastrow,  op.  cit.,  p.  15. 


CLASSIFICATION  13 

religion,  more  particularly  those  "  pre-logical,"  remote  in 
time,  but  also  those  remote  in  place.  They  believe  with 
the  Hindu  that  only  a  snake  can  see  a  snake's  legs  and  they 
are  not  altogether  wrong.  Man  is  the  product  of  his  group's 
experience.  Nevertheless,  it  will  not  be  a  loss  if  the  stu- 
dent begins  by  trying  to  understand  the  feeling  as  well  as 
the  formal  ritual  of  the  other  man;  and  it  is  still  question- 
able whether  one  man  is  not  more  like  another  because  of 
his  humanity  than  unlike  because  of  his  social  group  ; 
whether,  in  short,  pre-logical  and  logical  are  proper  substi- 
tutes for  primitive  and  civilized. 

Finally,  a  word  as  to  the  utility  of  our  study.  It  is  with 
religions  as  with  languages,  "  he  who  knows  one  knows 
none  "  ;  that  is,  he  who  knows  only  his  own  does  not  know 
it  well.  A  man  may  be  a  good  Buddhist  without  knowing 
Christianity,  but  through  knowing  Christianity  he  will  be  a 
better  Buddhist;  for  he  will  learn  what  the  two  religions 
have  in  common  and  thus  realize  that  what  is  common  can- 
not be  unique.  So,  knowing  better  his  own,  he  will  become 
a  better  Buddhist,  since  not  to  know  is  to  be  circumscribed, 
which  leads  to  the  misunderstanding  of  relative  values, 
even,  at  times,  to  the  acceptance,  in  evaluating  one's  own 
religion,  of  the  adventitious  for  the  essential,  the  packing 
for  the  package,  the  myth  for  the  spirit. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Morris  Jastrow,  Jr.,  The  Study  of  Religion,  New  York,  1901. 
C.   H.  Toy,  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion,  Boston, 


Andrew  Lang,  The  Making  of  Religion,  London,  1900. 
C.  C.  J.  Webb,  Group  Theories  of  Religion  and  the  Individual, 
New  York,  1916. 


CHAPTER  TWO 

GENERAL   CHARACTERISTICS   OF   PRIMITIVE   RELIGIONS 

IN  using  the  word  primitive  of  early  undeveloped  forms  of 
religion  it  must  be  understood  that  primitive  is  not  synony- 
mous with  primordial.     The  word  is  applied  exactly  as  it 
is  commonly  applied  to  primitive  art,  to  connote  art  found 
among  peoples  at  a  low  stage  today  or  in  ancient  times. 
With  some  exceptions  the  simpler  form  is  the  more  primi- 
tive form  of  thought,  whether  in  art  or  religion,  rather 
more  so  in  fact  in  religion  than  in  art,  as  when  the  Roman 
advanced  industrially  to  the  iron  age  and  yet  used  a  stone 
knife  for  sacrifice,  and  the  Teuton  used  a  stone  hammer  in 
the  religious  rite  of  settling  a  boundary,  and  the  Australian, 
to  whom  even  stone  art  is  modern,  still  uses  a  sharpened 
stick  for  the  rite  of  circumcision.     But  there  are  two  as- 
pects of  religion,  creed  and  cult.     They  advance  unequally. 
iCreed  always  outstrips  cult.     What  is  no  longer  believed  is 
/still  practised ;  the  rite  preserves  as  myth  the  older  creed. 
That  religions  may  all  be  traced  back  to  one  primordial 
religion  is  not  wholly  a  narrow  "  orthodox  "  view.     In  this 
form,  however,  it  is  still  held  by  both  the  Hindu  and  the 
Christian  of  very  conservative  type.     For  example,  about 
two  thousand  years  ago  Manu,  the  Hindu  law-giver,  de- 
clared, what  is  still  believed  by  orthodox  Brahmans,  that 
one  true  religion  was  revealed  to  man  in  the  beginning  and 
that  all  later  types  of  religion  have  been  vain  divergencies 
from  this  divine  model,  and  Dr.  Nassau,  in  his  useful  book 
on  fetishism,  says:     "All  religions  had  but  one  source  and 
that  a  pure  one.     From  it  have  grown  perversions  varying 

14 


GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  15 

in  their  proportions  of  truth  and  error,"  almost  as  if  he  were 
translating  Manu.1 

But,  with  less  universal  scope  and  with  no  implication  of 
divine  origin,  other  modern  writers  have  maintained  that 
religion  has  spread  out  from  one  centre  and  infected  or 
affected  the  whole  known  world,  or,  more  conservatively,  a 
great  part  of  the  world.  Thus  the  Akkadian  theory  of  Mr. 
J.  F.  Hewitt2  attempts  to  explain  the  religions  of  France 
and  Mexico -as  due  to  the  Akkadians  of  15000  B.C.  in  an 
ingenious  but  not  very  judicious  flood  of  speculation.  An- 
other theory,  somewhat  like  it  but  sober  enough  to  have  been 
adopted  by  some  scientists,  is  the  theory  of  adaptionism 
advocated  by  O.  Gruppe.  Starting  with  a  study  of  Greek 
Cults  in  relation  to  Oriental  religions,  the  author  has  tried 
to  show  that  religion  originated  in  the  deification  of  intoxi- 
cants in  western  Asia  and  thence  extended  itself  in  all  di- 
rections. Such  anthropologists  as  have  been  influenced  by 
this  theory  accordingly  hold  that  northern  Europe,  orig- 
inally irreligious,  received  religion  from  Asia  Minor  after 
the  glacial  period  and  this  they  think  is  the  reason  why  the 
remains  of  corpses  are  found  in  the  kitchenmiddens,  lack 
of  burial  proving  lack  of  religion.  But  perhaps  friends 
were  buried  in  the  sea  and  foes  were  left  unburied.  It  is 
at  any  rate  a  slender  proof  of  irreligion. 

The  latest  theory  of  this  sort  is  that  of  Professor  Grafton 
E.  Smith,  who,  rejecting  the  idea  that  the  human  mind 
works  out  in  the  same  way  in  different  localities,  has  sought 
to  prove  3  that  mummification,  megalithic  architecture,  and 
idol-making,  with  the  subsidiary  factors  of  sun-worship, 
serpent-worship,  and  circumcision,  first  arose  C.3OOO  B.  c. 
in  Egypt  and  spread  thence  all  over  Asia,  Polynesia,  and 
South  America.  How  the  religious  migration  took  place 
Mr.  Smith  promises  to  explain  in  a  future  volume.  His 

1  R.  H.  Nassau,  Fetichism  in  West  Africa,  New  York,  1904,  p.  23. 

2  History  and  Chronology  of  the  Myth-Making  Age,  London  and 
New  York,  1901. 

3  The  Migrations  of  Early  Culture,  New  York,  1916. 


l6  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

theory  has  an  advantage  over  the  others  mentioned  in  that 
it  does  not  attempt  to  prove  more  than  that  certain  religious 
features  have  migrated.1 

It  is  indeed  probable  that  there  has  been  religious  inter- 
course between  European  and  Asiatic  races  from  very  early 
times.  But  we  do  not  know  the  extent  of  Sumerian  influ- 
ence upon  the  Semite,  Semitic  upon  the  Egyptian,  Finnish 
upon  the  Teuton;  still  less  do  we  know  how  much  Chinese 
religion  was  affected  by  the  West  or  in  how  far  early  Ro- 
man religion  borrowed  from  the  East ;  least  of  all,  whether 
Asia  influenced  America.  In  the  narrower  field  of  Mediter- 
ranean cults,  it  is  not  so  much  a  question  of  race  as  of 
tradition.2  There  are  racial  characteristics  which  affect  re- 
ligion but  there  is  no  general  Semitic  as  opposed  to  a  gen- 
eral Aryan  religion.  Fundamentally,  primitive  religious 
characteristics  are  human  not  racial. 

These  characteristics  are  not  only  human  in  the  sense  of 
universal,  but,  what  is  more  important,  they  are  human  in 
the  sense  that  the  religious  attitude  is  not  a  peculiar  atti- 
tude, but  it  is  the  attitude  assumed  toward  other  humans. 
There  has  been  a  prolonged  discussion  on  the  idle  question 
whether  magic  or  religion  is  the  "  child."  The  argument 
in  favour  of  magic  as  prior  to  religion  was  that  religion  is 
public,  magic  is  private ;  religion  propitiates,  magic  coerces ; 
and  when  man  found  that  he  could  not  get  what  he  wanted 
by  coercion  he  tried  propitiation.  It  is  assumed  further 
that  a  being  coerced  is  inimical,  a  being  propitiated  is  be- 
nevolent, and  spirits  are  first  regarded  as  inimical.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  granted  that  there  is  a  form  of  magic  which 
is  practised  without  regard  to  a  superhuman  power.  This 
has  been  called  "  primitive  science."  Like  makes  like ; 
sticking  thorns  into  an  image,  or  melting  it,  produces  a  simi- 

1That  all  cultural  ideas  arose  but  once  and  have  spread  by  loan 
to  one  race  after  another  and  that  there  is  no  common  human  psy- 
chology, this  is  the  basis  of  the  Methode  der  Ethnologic  of  F. 
Graebner,  Heidelburg,  1911. 

2  See  Darmesteter,  Selected  Essays,  Boston,  1895,  p.  155. 


GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  17 

lar  effect  on  the  one  imaged;  pouring  out  water  produces 
rain. 

But  the  primitive  savage,  apart  from  his  primitive  sci- 
ence, treats  his  spirits  exactly  as  he  treats  his  human  neigh- 
bours. When  he  wants  a  thing,  he  gets  it  either  by  coercion 
or  by  propitiation,  as  seems  best.  His  spirits  are  just  like  ' 
his  neighbours,  neither  beneficent  nor  inimical,  but  good  or 
bad  on  occasion.  Even  in  magical  ceremonies  the  savage 
adopts  the  "  religious  attitude." 

The  Australians  are  said  to  be  without  religion;  at  any 
rate' they  are  chiefly  concerned  with  magical  ceremonies  to 
produce  increase  of  crops.  To  do  this  they  recite  charms. 
But  prayer  and  propitiation  are  the  outstanding  features  of 
this  magic.  They  "  sing  the  horn,"  for  example,  and  their 
song  is  a  charm,  but,  like  charm  from  carmen,  the  song 
invokes  a  power  which  has  volition.  When  the  Australian 
invokes  lightning,  he  invokes  what  is  to  him  a  conscious 
being  having  a  will  to  respond  or  not.  He  imagines  volition 
even  in  a  member  of  the  body  or  in  dust,  because  he  cannot 
do  otherwise,  not  yet  having  reached  the  point  where  he 
can  think  of  matter  in  any  other  way.  Especially  anything 
lively  enough  to  move  is  alive,  and  what  is  alive  is,  like  him- 
self, a  being  with  a  will.  But,  even  without  apparent  sign 
of  life,  any  instrument  is  to  him  a  will-possessing  being. 
Thus,  to  punish  a  man  who  has  stolen  his  wife,  the  Aus- 
tralian savage  makes  an  instrument  like  a  knife  and  "  kneel- 
ing before  it,"  a  religious  not  coercive  attitude,  sings  to 
it  a  request  to  kill  the  injurer.  As  Messrs.  Spencer  and 
Gillen  say,  "  the  magic  (both  the  influence  and  the  charmed 
object  are  called  '  magic')  is  regarded  as  an  evil  spirit."1 
In  this  "  land  without  religion,"  eclipse  is  caused  by  an 
"  evil  spirit,"  a  term  not  plainly  defined  but  wavering  be- 
tween a  personal  and  impersonal  power. 

There  can  be  no  clear  understanding  of  the  foundation 
of  religion  without  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  man  has 

1  The  Native  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  London,  1899,  p.  549. 


1 8  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

passed  through  a  stage  where  he  still  fails  to  discriminate 
between  matter  and  spirit.  Before  a  belief  in  freed  spirits 
is  possible,  man  must  be  able  to  abstract  spirit  from  body. 
But,  in  the  thought  of  the  lowest  savage,  matter  and  spiritual 
power  are  so  interrelated  that  there  is  no  body  without 
conscious  power  and  no  spirit  without  body.  Even  in  com- 
paratively high  religions,  such  as  that  of  the  Vedic  poets 
of  India,  plough  and  drum  are  conscious  volitive  powers, 
as  much  so  as  the  sun  and  other  phenomena  expressing 
active  life  and  will.  Samoyeds  and  'Finns  worship  objects 
without  recognition' of  spirit  detached  from  a  natural  basis. 
Some  Africans  today  are  unable  to  distinguish  between  mat- 
ter and  spirit. 

In  view  of  these  various  considerations,  we  must  start 
with  the  rejection  of  any  theory  that  presupposes  the  pri- 
ority of  either  religion  or  magic ;  that  is,  we  must  reject  both 
the  animism  of  Spencer,  Tylor,  Reville,  and  Jevons  and  the 
naturism  of  Pfleiderer  and  Menzies.  The  history  of  reli- 
gion cannot  be  traced  back  to  a  more  complex  psychosis 
than  that  of  today's  savage.  But  that  savage  shows  that  he 
cannot  imagine  in  other  phenomena  what  he  does  not  recog- 
nize in  himself.  What  he  recognizes,  the  lowest  savage,  is 
a  life-power  or  potency  so  diffused  that  all  parts  of  the 
body  possess  their  different  "  souls."  His  mind  cannot  dis- 
tinguish between  soul  and  body  or  between  subjective  and 
objective.  The  object  to  which  his  vague  mumblings  of 
hope  and  fear  are  directed  is  neither  god  nor  devil  nor  a 
power  of  any  sort  as  a  person ;  it  is  rather  the  potency  called 
mana  or  orenda. 

But  it  is  not  (and  here  even  so  clever  a  writer  as  Jane 
Harrison  has  failed  to  understand  the  matter)  a  special  de- 
posit in  an  individual  of  any  universal  power.  There  is  no 
such  primitive  fore-shadowing  of  pantheism.  The  savage 
thinks  concretely ;  he  does  not  generalize ;  above  all  he  has 
never  thought  of  orenda  or  mana  as  one  universal  power  of 
which  he  and  his  rival  and  his  object  of  devotion  have  each 
a  part.  His  mana  is  his  own;  that  of  the  chief  or  of  the 


GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  IQ 

animal  is  theirs;  just  as  his  physical  strength  and  theirs  are 
not  the  same  strength. 

The  Junglemen  of  Chota  Nagpur  are  about  as  low  intel- 
lectually as  any  savages.  Their  religious  sense  has  been 
well  summed  up  by  a  trained  observer  in  these  words: 
"  The  indefinite  something  which  they  fear  and  attempt  to 
propitiate  is  not  a  person.  The  idea  which  lies  at  the  root 
of  their  religion  is  that  of  power  or  rather  of  many  powers, 
the  shifting  and  shadowy  company  of  unknown  powers  or 
influences  making  for  evil  rather  than  for  good,  which  re- 
sides in  the  primeval  forest,  in  the  crumbling  hills,  in  the 
rushing  river,  in  the  spreading  tree;  which  gives  its  spring 
to  the  tiger,  its  venom  to  the  snake,  which  generates  jungle 
fever,  and  walks  abroad  in  the  terrible  guise  of  cholera, 
smallpox,  or  murrain.  Closer  than  this  he  does  not  define 
the  object  to  which  he  offers  his  victim,  or  whose  symbol 
he  daubs  with  red  at  the  appointed  season.  Some  sort  of 
power  is  there  and  that  is  enough  for  him."  * 

So  in  fetishism  and  witchcraft  there  is  not  that  antago- 
nism between  fearing  the  inimical  and  propitiating  the 
beneficent  power  which  the  theory  of  magic  upholds;  nor 
is  the  object  sharply  defined.  But  there  is  this  in  favour  of 
the  animistic  theory,  that  whereas  the  mysterious  object  of 
religious  regard  in  natural  phenomena  remains  part  of  the 
indiscrete  material-immaterial,  in  the  case  of  soul  in  man  or 
animal  the  savage  argues  from  his  own  experience  in 
dreams  and  hence  believes  in  ghosts  material  but  invisible, 
not  visible-invisible  as,  for  example,  the  waterfall-power. 

But  it  is  of  interest  to  see  that  even  in  the  magical  stage, 
where  the  power  or  potency  is  scarcely  defined,  the  religious 
apparatus  is  already  at  work.  At  Seville  one  finds  a  ca- 
thedral where  the  altar  in  time  past  served  as  a  refuge,  in- 
violable because  hedged  with  divinity,  for  the  criminal ;  un- 
approachable save  to  the  initiate.  There,  too,  to  this  day 
the  priests  still  dance  the  recessional,  unconsciously  imitating 
savage  precedents  in  both  regards,  and  religious  drama  has 

1  Risley  in  Census  for  India,  1901,  Part  I,  352!. 


20  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

been  enacted  in  mystery  plays,  as  religious  processions  still 
reflect  similar  mysteries.  That  the  participants  believe  in 
ghosts  and  spirits,  in  a  future  life,  and  a  being  above,  is 
but  another  reflection  from  an  immemorial  past. 

For  these  traits  are  those  characteristic  of  many  primi- 
tive religions;  they  may  be  said  to  be  the  religious  basis 
of  the  world.  For  first,  as  to  the  spiritual  belief,  even  the 
Pygmies  of  Africa,  who  seem  to  have  no  other  religious  re- 
spect, believe  in  a  life  after  death  in  the  form  of  serpent- 
reincarnation  and  for  three  days  weep  and  sing  over  their 
dead,  though  they  have  no  fetishes,  idols,  or  totems,  and 
dance  only  for  sport.  Then  the  savages  of  Queensland, 
and  the  same  is  true  of  those  of  New  Holland,  believe  in 
evil  spirits,  though  they  make  no  sacrifices  and  have  no  idols. 
In  Tierra  del  Fuego  the  natives  have  scarcely  a  religious 
belief  save  in  a  sort  of  giant  or  man-god,  who  knows  men's 
words  and  acts  and  influences  the  weather.  Ordinarily  a 
higher  spirit,  when  recognized  at  all,  is  an  inactive  being,  as 
among  the  Patagonians,  who  believe  in  evil  spirits  and  a 
passive  higher  spirit,  having  apparently  no  other  creed  ex- 
cept the  expectation  of  living  after  death  in  a  pleasant 
grove.  This  expectation,  however,  is  not  by  any  means 
universal.  Often  it  is  found  in  regard  to  a  few  elect  souls, 
but  not  for  all.  Elsewhere  there  is  rank  disbelief.  Thus 
the  Aru  Islanders  believe  in  spiritual  powers,  scarcely  in 
spirits,  but  say  pessimistically,  mail  mati  sudah,  "  dead  when 
dead  (and  that  is)  the  end  (of  you)."1  Compare  the  old 
Roman  epitaphs  with  their  non  sum  non  euro.  But  usually 
there  is  a  vague  expectation  of  existence  after  death  or  the 
"  expectation  of  a  vague  existence,"  such  as  that  attributed 
to  the  Head-hunters  of  Borneo.1 

The  formal  side  of  a  religion  which  is  still  undeveloped 
is  surprisingly  illustrated  in  the  case  of  the  Australians. 
Here  a  people  "  without  religion  "  in  their  magic  ritual  wear 

1  These  savages  change  their  religion  according  to  their  economic 
condition,  those  that  have  become  agricultural  adopting  new  spirits 
to  suit  their  new  way  of  living. 


GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  21 

masks  to  represent  ancestral  totems,  as  in  some  higher  real 
religions,  and  act  out  what  is  virtually  a  religious  drama  or 
the  prototype  of  drama.  Then  the  cloistered  implements 
of  their  ceremonies  make  the  place  where  they  are  hidden 
a  sort  of  holy  ground,  within  which  no  slaughter  may  take 
place  and  from  which  the  profane  are  barred.  The  ances- 
tors from  whom  they  believe  themselves  descended  are  half- 
beast  creatures,  like  the  ancestor  of  the  Athenians,  Kekrops, 
who  had  a  serpent-tail.  They  are  said  to  believe  in  a  pas- 
sive Big  Man  called  Cutter-out  or  Maker  (compare  ro/xevs, 
a  patristic  title  of  the  Creator),  though  it  is  not  certain  that 
he  is  their  own  invention.  They  believe  in  a  double  soul 
and  in  transmigration.  Each  man  has  a  soul  destined  after 
death  to  pass  into  another  body  of  man  or  beast  of  the 
same  totem.  This  soul  is  duly  mourned  (the  mourning 
rites  also  have  analogues  in  higher  religions)  and  is  then 
driven  away  lest  it  annoy  the  survivors,  a  trait  found  in 
many  other  cases.  But  besides  this  soul  there  is  another 
which  is  never  incorporated.  It  accompanies  the  first  in  all 
its  transmigrations,  but  is  itself  an  undying  soul.  Another 
belief  should  be  noticed  in  this  regard.  We  think  of  totems 
as  animal  and  vegetable,  but  the  Australian  totem-objects 
spiritized  as  powers  include  natural  phenomena,  such  as  sun 
and  lightning.  In  the  invocation  to  lightning,  therefore, 
these  savages  stand  on  a  plane  uniting  totemism  and  na- 
ture-worship. 

The  more  one  studies  religion  the  more  natural  it  seems 
both  in  its  origin  and  in  its  expression.  There  are  innumer- 
able complex  expressions  of  religion,  but  they  are  not  mys- 
terious, though  they  appear  to  be  so  because  they  are  inter- 
twined in  a  confusing  way.  But  the  savage  with  whom  re- 
ligion begins  is  a  simple  fellow  and  as  logical  as  one  could 
expect.1  He  sees  himself  face  to  face  with  mysterious  pow- 
ers which  (whom)  he  meets  every  day.  Above  all  he  faces 
two  great  mysteries,  life  and  death.  To  these  also,  as  to  his 

1  Pace  the  school  of  the  pre-logical  savage,  based  on  the  idea  that 
all  mystery  is  pre-logical. 


22  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

daily  objects  of  doubt  or  fear,  he  tries  for  safety's  sake  to 
adjust  himself.  Hence  the  almost  universal  element  of  the 
dance.  For  life  comes  through  birth  and  the  impulse  to 
bring  birth,  be  it  of  children,  or  of  animals,  or  of  grain,  must, 
he  thinks,  be  furthered  by  the  same  sensuous  motions  which 
he  experiences  in  person  and  sees  expressed  even  in  animals. 
Peacocks,  for  example,  in  a  suitable  clime  bring  the  mat- 
ing-dance  before  him.  Hence  the  dance  for  productivity 
which  marks  even  the  lowest  savages.  Thus  the  Aleuts, 
between  Kamchatka  and  Alaska,  have  scarcely  any  reli- 
gious expression  besides  dancing  naked  on  the  snow  with 
masks  to  prevent  the  ghosts  from  being  seen.  They  bridge 
the  birth-dance  and  the  death-dance,  for  the  latter  is  in 
honour  of  the  ghosts,  who  incited  thereby  will  bring  pro- 
ductivity. Hence  the  dance  at  the  grave  as  well  as  the 
dance  for  birth.  But  there  is  also  another  element  in  the 
dance.  It  intoxicates  if  pursued  madly  enough,  and  this 
intoxication,  like  that  of  liquor,  makes  the  savage  imagine 
himself  possessed  of  a  supernatural  power.  Hence,  when 
the  ghosts  are  to  be  ejected,  they  are  best  confronted  by 
some  one  thus  possessed,  even  if,  as  in  Shamanism,  the 
supernatural  power  is  itself  a  ghostly  power  acquired  by  a 
ghost-controller.  All  the  many  secret  societies  of  the  savage 
have  to  do  with  natural  mysteries  interwoven  with  the  tribal 
traditions.  On  the  question  of  primitive  ethics  as  religious 
we  shall  speak  later. 

Another  characteristic  of  primitive  religions  is  the  out- 
ward expression  of  reverence  by  means  of  memorial  stones. 
They  are  the  prototypes  of  churches.  But,  unless  the  cause 
is  known,  errors  are  apt  to  be  made  in  interpreting  such 
stones.  A  Stonehenge  may  be  the  monument  of  sun- wor- 
shippers, but  there  are  other  stone  circles  which  are  like 
those  of  Stonehenge  and  yet  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
sun.  For  example,  there  is  a  miniature  Stonehenge  in  Bur- 
mah,  but  it  merely  commemorates  human  activities.  It  is, 
too,  a  common  practice  among  the  Fiji  Islanders  to  set  up  a 
stone  in  memory  of  every  man  eaten  by  oneself.  One  such 


GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  23 

cannibal  has  a  record  of  nine  hundred  stones,  which,  set  in 
a  circle,  might  lead  to  the  notion  that  it  commemorated 
something  quite  different. 

In  this  chapter  we  have  considered  some  general  charac- 
teristics of  primitive  religions,  man's  attitude  toward  the 
spiritual  world,  the  expression  of  that  attitude  through  fear, 
entreaty,  by  means  of  dance  and  spell,  and  the  primitive 
monument  of  religious  significance,  not  only  because  we 
shall  find  them  recurring  again  and  again,  but  also  because 
they  show  how  the  higher  religions  rest  upon  savage  founda- 
tions; not  to  belittle  the  higher,  but  on  the  contrary  to  let 
it  be  seen  at  the  outset  how  these  higher  religions,  though 
they  rest  upon  the  lower,  have  yet  raised  themselves  far 
above  their  original  level,  and,  conversely,  how  even  in  the 
lowest  religions  there  is  already,  as  if  inherent  in  man's 
nature,  the  hope  of  something  beyond  this  life  and  the  faith 
in  something  higher  than  man. 

We  turn  now  to  the  study  of  individual  religions. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

E.  B.  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  New  York,  1874-1894. 

Sir  J.  G.  Frazer,  The  Golden  Bough,  London,  1907-1915. 

C.   P.   Tiele,   Outlines   of  the  History  of  Religions,   London, 

1877. 

Irving  King,  Development  of  Religion,  New  York,  1910. 
Andrew  Lang,  Myth,  Ritual,  and  Religion,  London,  1899. 
R.  R.  Marett,  The  Threshold  of  Religion,  London,  1914. 
W.  M.  Wundt,  Mythus  und  Religion,  part  of  the  Volkerpsy- 

chologie,  Leipzig,  1906. 

Hutton  Webster,  Primitive  Secret  Societies,  New  York,  1908. 
Baldwin  Spencer  and  F.  J.  Gillen,  The  Native  Tribes  of  Central 

Australia,  London,  1899. 
Lord    Avebury,   Marriage,    Totemism,   and  Religion,   London, 

1911. 


CHAPTER  THREE 

AFRICAN    RELIGIONS.      I.    SPIRIT-LORE 

AFRICA  contains  besides  its  Negroid  population  sundry  dis- 
tinct races,  the  Pygmies  and  Bushmen,  and  mixed  races, 
such  as  the  partly  Semitic  Somalis,  the  partly  Caucasian 
Nilotic  tribes,  and  the  Mongolian-Malay-Negro  Malagasi 
or  Hovas  of  Madagascar.  Negroes  more  or  less  pure  are 
the  southern  Bantus,  the  equatorial  tribes,  and  those  of  the 
Gold  and  Slave  Coasts  on  the  west.  The  Hottentots  are  a 
mixture  of  Bushmen  and  Negro  elements. 

Clearly  influenced  by  foreigners  are  the  Abyssinian 
Gallas.  They  worship  trees  and  serpents,  have  a  spring 
festival,  and  take  omens  from  entrails.  Somali  ordeals,  of 
boiling  water  and  hot  iron,  may  also  be  borrowed.  In  the 
West,  the  Yoruba-speaking  Negroes,  who  may  have  Malay 
blood,  have  been  in  close  contact  with  Semites,  and  their 
caste-gods,  trade-gods,  sacred  fire,  and  cult  of  a  sky-  or 
lightning-god  cannot  be  regarded  as  indubitably  native. 
Their  rest-day  is  the  first  day  of  the  week  because  it  is  un- 
lucky, and  since  this  is  a  native  notion  it  may  be  original, 
as  their  local  "  souls"  (of  the  head,  stomach,  toe,  etc.)  and 
some  of  their  gods  of  phenomena  are  genuinely  Negro.  Of 
these,  Olokun,  sea-god,  has  a  wife,  Elusa,  scaled  from 
breasts  to  hips,  like  the  fish-formed  Polynesian  sea-god  and 
his  Semitic  counterparts.  Their  Orisha  Oko  is  a  love-god, 
whose  messengers  are  bees,  like  those  of  the  Hindu  love- 
god;  but  he  is  also  a  phallic  garden-god  of  productivity, 
with  a  Yam  festival  of  orgiastic  character,  in  shape  a 
veritable  Priapus. 

So  strong  in  some  cases  is  the  likeness  between  Negro 
and  alien  cults  that  borrowing  is  probable.  The  Nilotic 

24 


AFRICAN  SPIRIT  LORE  25 

Masai  have  even  been  regarded  *  as  "  primitive  Semitic  " ; 
but  scholars  have  not  generally  accepted  this  conclusion. 

The  southern  Bushmen  show  the  bond  between  culture 
and  religion.  They  draw  and  paint  well,  are  fond  of  song 
and  dance,  and  have  quite  a  mythology  with  higher  poly- 
theistic traits,  though  they  remain  fetish-worshippers,  and 
at  the  best  are  of  low  intelligence.  They  regard  sun  and 
moon  as  spirits  and  for  the  significant  reason  that  "  they 
move,  so  they  have  life."  It  was  a  Bushman  who,  on  see- 
ing a  cart  for  the  first  time,  worshipped  it  as  a  living  thing 
and  regarded  the  trailing  smaller  cart  as  the  child  of  the 
larger  one.  They  have  been  credited  with  an  unaided  belief 
in  a  "  Master  of  Life  "  as  a  Creator,  but  this  god  'Kaang  re- 
ceives a  licentious  blood-dance  as  worship  and  is  probably 
only  a  god  of  productivity.  They  dance  and  sing  or  shout, 
to  scare  away  disease  and  other  demons,  and  believe 
enough  in  a  hereafter  to  place  a  spear  in  a  warrior's  grave 
and  to  mutilate  themselves,  amputating  a  finger- joint,  to 
insure  happiness  in  the  next  world.  Like  all  Negroes,  they 
wear  talismans  to  keep  off  evil.  They  act  out  dramas  with 
animal-head  masks,  which  Stow  calls  Satyric,  thus  appear- 
ing like  Egyptian  gods. 

The  Bantus  include  the  Zulus  who  are  more  advanced. 
They  revere  the  eagle  but  not  as  a  totem.2  Their  belief  in 
soul  is  real  but  vague.  The  soul  may  be  left  about  any- 
where. The  shadow  is  a  follow-soul.  But  ancestral  souls 
are  revered  and  even  thanked  for  blessings  and  feared  as 
illness-bringers.  Souls  may  enter  animals,  and  separate 
spirits  of  places  exist.  Feasts  and  dances  are  for  joy  and 
thanksgiving;  silence  and  abstention  from  food  guard 
against  evil  spirits.  The  Ekoi  (Bantus)  are  said  to  have 
but  two  deities,  sky  and  earth,  but  hosts  of  demons  of  trees, 
rivers,  lakes,  and  hills.  The  Matabili  (Zulu  type)  kill  vic- 
tims for  the  use  of  the  dead.  Among  the  Wagiryama 

1  M.  Merker,  Die  Masai,  Berlin,  1904. 

2  Compare  Macdonald,  Journal  Anth.  Inst.,  vol.  xx,  on  Zulu  super- 
stitions. 


26  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Bantus  there  is  a  temple-prototype,  not  only  a  men's  en- 
closure, sacred  to  them,  but  also  a  tree  surrounded  by  a 
tabooed  fetish-belt.  The  Ishogo  Bantus  of  the  French 
Congo  have  a  taboo  hut  beside  a  sacred  tree,  which  the 
Wapokomo  Bantus  make  into  a  veritable  bethel  or  god- 
house.  The  West  African  Bantus  have  the  earth-mystery 
system  of  fetishism  (see  below)  and  a  vague  belief  in  a 
great  spirit  has  arisen  among  the  agricultural x  Wakamba 
Bantus.  Poison-ordeals  and  phallic  cults  are  also  known 
to  them  and  they  tattoo,  but  only  decoratively. 

Birth-rites,  rites  of  purification,  and  the  worship  of  both 
ghosts  and  nature-spirits  are  characteristic  of  all  these  Ne- 
groes. The  mixed  Hottentot,  perhaps  partly  Bantu,  add 
a  few  features,  moral  fables  of  ghosts  and  animals,  and  the 
economic  and  religious  superiority  of  women.  Their 
women  follow  a  pastoral  life  while  men  only  hunt ;  the  re- 
sult is  that  the  women  own  the  house  and  practically  rule 
the  men;  among  our  Iroquois  also  the  high  position  of 
women  was  due  to  their  economic  importance.  Owing  to 
pastoral  conditions  there  is  here  closer  and  longer  family- 
intercourse.  Hence  has  come  a  higher  development  of 
moral  qualities ;  and  from  this,  the  attribution  of  such  quali- 
ties to  spirits.  Thus  the  conception  of  kind  spirits,  to  whom 
man  should  be  grateful,  is  much  more  pronounced  among 
the  Hottentots  than  among  Bushmen  and  pure  Bantus. 
They  have  real  gods  as  well  as  spirits,  such  as  Tsuni-goam, 
a  benevolent  god,  unfortunately  of  uncertain  origin.2  He 
may  be  an  ancestral  ghost ;  such  ancestors  are  almost  house- 

1  Agricultural  life  is  apt  thus  to  develop  greater  spiritual  figures. 
The  Western  Bantus  have  secret  societies,  mysteries  supported  by 
temple  priests,   an   esoteric   language,  initiation,   etc.,   of   an  erotic 
character;   but,   like  their  tptemism,  these  are  less   religious   than 
social.    The   dance,   which   imitates   a  crane  yet   is   performed   by 
actors  striped  like  zebras,  shows  how  such  a  performance  can  arise 
without  religious  meaning. 

2  Hahn  interprets  this  "  supreme  god  "  as  Dawn,  which  is  doubt- 
ful.   To  Toosib,  a  sort  of  Neptune,  are  made  prayers  and  offerings. 
Heitsi-eibib  is  supposed  by  some  to  be  the  moon.     He  was  "born 
of  a  virgin,"  who  conceived  him  by  sucking  a  stalk. 


AFRICAN  SPIRIT  LORE  27 

hold  gods.  But  there  are  also  clear  nature-gods  of  storm 
and  thunder;  and  bad  demons,  some  certainly  ghosts,  and 
one  supreme  devil,  against  whom  wizards  and  necromancers 
are  employed. 

The  seat  of  life  among  the  equatorial  Negroes  is  the 
liver,  as  blood  from  the  liver  of  a  goat  seals  blood-brother- 
hood. Here  posts  carved  as  rude  figures  mark  graves,  also 
marked  by  cairns,  where  cups  are  left,  indicating  belief 
in  a  future  life.  Cannibalism  and  fetishism  occur,  but  are 
more  pronounced  among  the  western  Negroes,  to  whom  we 
shall  turn  immediately.  First,  however,  we  must  inquire 
whether  the  Negro  really  has  the  conception  of  God,  in  dis- 
tinction from  spirits  and  gods  of  local  power. 

Among  the  pure  western  tribes  called  Ewe-speaking  Ne- 
groes, the  highest  god  is  Mawu,  the  coverer,  a  god  of  rain 
or  sky,  with  whom  the  Greek  Ouranos  and  Indie  Varuna 
have  of  course  been  compared.  German  missionaries  found 
him  and  made  him  over  into  a  supreme  god,  creator  of  all 
things,  God ;  whereas  the  natives  held  him  as  only  one  but 
the  highest  (physically)  among  many  gods.  Their  "  high- 
est "  was  simply  topmost.  Mawu  was  the  upper  god. 
They  said  he  was  too  far  away  to  care  for  sacrifice  and 
seldom  paid  any  attention  to  him,  praying  to  him  only  when 
they  wanted  rain.  He  was  so  indifferent  to  man  that  he 
never  punished ;  hence  he  was  "  good."  The  African  al- 
ways recognizes  a  being  behind  action,  but  he  does  not  re- 
gard this  being  as  naturally  interested  in  man ;  thus  the  low 
Basutos  of  the  south-east  never  of  themselves  imagined  that 
earth  and  sky  might  be  the  work  of  an  invisible  being. 
But  Negroes  are  receptive  and  the  idea  once  suggested  is 
assimilated  by  them.  No  ancestor  ever  creates  the  world ; 
he  creates  or  begets  only  the  family  or  clan.  As  we  shall  see 
in  Polynesian  religion,  the  savage  regards  the  world  rather 
as  evolved  than  created  and  a  "  creator  "  is  either  a  fertility- 
spirit  or  a  clan-ancestor.  The  "  chief  above  "  of  Negroes, 
prior  to  the  advent  of  missionaries,  was  either  such  a  clan- 
ancestor  or  an  active  storm-spirit  or  rain-god.  As  a  Zulu 


28  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Negro  once  said  to  Bishop  Callaway  (in  the  words  of  the 
Rig  Veda,  and  of  Horace :  coelo  tonantem  credidimus  Jovem 
regnare),  "We  know  him  because  he  thunders."  But  he 
did  not  think  of  this  god  as  a  spirit  outside  its  own 
limited  domain.  He  said  to  the  Bishop :  "  We  do  not 
know  him  or  his  laws ;  we  know  only  that  he  strikes  when 
man  offends.  We  worship  only  tribe-spirits."  In  general,  this 
is  true,  the  ancestor  or  tribe-spirit  is  the  chief  African  god. 

Some  tribes  of  Nyassa  acknowledge  each  its  own  rain- 
maker, here  the  ancestral  spirit.  The  Hereras  of  Damara- 
land  recognize  no  higher  spirit  than  this.  Their  apparent 
"  tree-sacrifice "  is  made  not  to  the  tree  but,  through 
twigs  taken  from  a  tree  sacred  to  ancestors  and  hung 
up  at  the  place  of  sacrifice,  to  their  highest  ghost-spirit. 
It  is  invariably  due  to  the  missionary  when  an  ancestor- 
spirit  is  taken  as  a  creative  sky-spirit.  The  sky-spirit, 
usually  lightning,  never  creates;  he  only  destroys.  The 
great  Unkulunkulu  (or  Munku-Unkulu)  of  the  Zulus  was 
originally  an  androgynous  ancestor  and  was  converted  into 
"  God  "  about  1835  by  Captain  Gardiner.  The  Hottentots 
too  had  no  notion  of  God,  and  "  there  is  no  God  in  the 
Kongo  "  (Bentley  ap.  Keane).  On  this  whole  topic  Bishop 
Callaway  is  still  much  more  authoritative  than  the  later 
writers  who  visited  the  natives  after  missionaries  had  in- 
doctrinated them.  He  says  (in  his  Unkulunkulu,  p.  105)  : 
"  Nothing  is  more  easy  than  to  enquire  of  heathen  savages 
the  character  of  their  creed  and  during  the  conversation  to 
impart  to  them  great  truths  and  ideas  which  they  never 
heard  before,  and  presently  to  have  these  come  back  again 
as  articles  of  their  own  original  faith." 

We  take  up  now  the  closely  related  cults  of  the  Negroes 
of  the  West  Coast,  where  also  this  God-idea  has  been  predi- 
cated of  the  Ashantis,  who,  however,  are  less  advanced  than 
the  Dahomians,  as  these  in  turn  are  less  advanced  than  the 
Yoruba-speaking  Negroes.  But  the  Dahomy  cult  is  the  first 
to  offer  even  slight  ground  for  such  a  belief,  and  that  has 
been  influenced  by  missionaries,  as  has  been  the  cult  of 


AFRICAN  SPIRIT  LORE  2Q 

Nzambi,  the  mother-spirit,  confused  now  with  that  of  the 
Virgin. 

Herbert  Spencer's  theory  that  nature-gods  come  from 
ghosts  has  been  abundantly  disproved  as  a  universal  propo- 
sition by  a  close  examination  of  the  religion  of  Ashanti  and 
Dahomy.  As  Ellis  says,  "  it  is  a  theory  not  warranted  by 
the  evidence"  (Yorubas,  p.  282).  But  Ellis  himself  is  in 
error  because,  though  he  rejects  one  system,  he  follows  an- 
other, that  of  animism.  Not  ghosts  but  confined  spirits  are 
his  fetish.  So  he  regards  the  worship  of  a  tree  as  neces- 
sarily implying  the  cult  of  a  tree-spirit  "  put  into  it  by 
priests."  But  in  discussing  the  western  Negroes,  we  must 
distinguish  the  Guinea  (Tshi-speaking)  Negroes  from  the 
Dahomians.  The  Fanti  and  Ashanti  of  the  Gold  Coast  and 
Slave  Coast,  respectively,  with  other  Ashantis  living  inland 
as  one  state  under  a  king  (whereas  the  Fanti  live  in  severed 
communities  without  political  union),  make  the  so-called 
Tshi-speakers ;  while  east  of  the  Fanti  and  Ashanti  and 
north  of  the  Slave  Coast  live  the  Ewe-speaking  Dahomians,1 
who  have  a  still  more  developed  centralized  government. 

The  Guinea  Negroes  are  all  characterized  by  totem-wor- 
ship, religious  cannibalism,  moon-cult,  and  fetishism.  The 
last  is  by  far  the  most  important  and  hence  is  treated  below 
in  a  separate  section.  The  segregated  Fanti  have  both  vege- 
table and  animal  totems;  their  highest  objects  of  devotion 
are  the  vegetable  silk-cotton  tree  and  the  python.  They 
have  one  real  god.  But  the  Dahomians,  who  have  a  royal 
house  and  realm-idea,  have  developed  further  the  idea  of 
gods  or  spirits  of  a  higher  and  more  comprehensive  order. 
In  the  Fanti  villages,  each  community  has  its  own  separate 
power  or  spirit;  in  Dahomy  these  similar  powers  or  spirits 
of  the  separate  communities  have  coalesced  into  one,  withal 
one  having  power  and  dignity  commensurate  with  his 

1Col.  Ellis  (see  the  Bibliography)  calls  these  groups  Tshi,  Ewe 
(pronounced  efe)  speakers  as  contrasted  with  the  Yoruba-speak- 
ers.  It  will  be  simpler  to  remember  the  groups  as  Guinea  and 
Dahomy  Negroes,  the  former  again  as  (kingly)  Ashantis  and 
(quasi  democratic)  Fantis. 


30  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

physical  expansion.  In  Dahomy,  too,  -  were  brought  the 
greater  sacrifices,  of  thousands  of  human  captives  slaugh- 
tered and  eaten,  either  in  thanksgiving  for  victory  or  to 
give  a  suitable  retinue  to  warriors  who  had  died.1  One  sees 
how  intimate  is  the  connection  here  between  religion  and 
the  social  group.  The  bigger  the  state,  the  bigger  the  god, 
compounded  of  various  gods ;  the  bigger  the  god's  province, 
the  less  local,  confined,  his  activity.  His  comprehensive- 
ness tends  to  make  him  more  abstract.  Again,  the  bigger 
the  state  and  its  god,  the  bigger  the  sacrifice,  just  as  the 
Amazons  of  Dahomy  represent  what  is  found  elsewhere 
on  a  small  scale  but  is  here  exaggerated  into  a  female  army. 

It  was  from  the  West  Coast  (Dahomy)  Negroes  that 
Voodoo  came  to  America  and  the  Obeah  or  Wanga  cult  to 
Hayti.  Wanga  is  not  necessarily  "  tied  to  the  snake,"  and 
is  less  informal;  Voodoo  requires  a  priest,  a  priestess,  and 
a  snake,  or  it  is  no  real  Voodoo,  a  word  meaning  fearful. 
Red  Voodoo  requires  human  victims ;  white  Voodoo  is  con- 
tent with  a  cock  or  goat ;  while  Wanga  does  not  "  show 
blood  "  but  acts  through  poison.2 

The  primitive  Guinea  powers  or  spirits  of  the  Fanti  and 
Ashanti  are  generally  malignant;  worship  is  due  to  fear 
but  also  to  hope  of  advantage.  The  kinds  of  "  spirits  "  are 
quite  clearly  sundered  and  as  these  are  perhaps  the  most 
primitive  native  or  untouched  classes  of  spiritual  powers, 
they  are  of  special  interest  and  importance.  First,  there  is 
the  indifferent  "  tribal  spirit " ;  second,  the  local  or  group- 
spirit  bearing  the  significant  name  Boshum,  "  evil-doer  " ; 
third,  the  family-spirit;  and  fourth,  the  Suhman  or  spirit 
revered  only  by  one  individual.  This  may  be  a  fetish  or  Kra 

1  The  Grand  Custom  slays  personal  attendants  at  a  king's  death ; 
the  Annual  Custom  slays  others  to  renew  the  retinue.    They  are 
celebrated  with  music  and  dance.    The  Dahomians  also  "  convey  a 
message  "  through  a  man  slaughtered  for  this  purpose,  who  will  tell 
the  ancestors  the  news,  a  trait  of  Shamanism. 

2  The   difference   is   explained   by   Miss    Kingsley,    West  African 
Studies,   pp.    139,    219.    Two   religious   customs,   like  those   of   the 
Hindu,  one  of  suttee  called  lemba,  and  one  of  infant  marriage,  an 
Igalwa,  West  African,  custom,  are  possibly  not  of  native  origin. 


AFRICAN  SPIRIT  LORE  31 

(see  below).  To  the  local  power,  of  river,  hill,  or  water, 
children  are  sacrificed,  to  make  it  beneficent.  Offerings  are 
also  made  to  the  family-spirit,  which,  though  kind,  may 
cause  disease,  sterility,  and  death.  In  so  far  as  these  are 
nature-forms  they  seem  to  act  as  such,  not  as  confining  a 
spirit.  There  is  thus  a  general,  once  local,  southern  thun- 
der-spirit of  rain,  called  Bobowissi ;  but  he  is  less  a  spirit 
than  thunder-and-rain.  His  northern  counterpart  Tando, 
however,  is  a  real  spirit  (Ashanti  "  hater  ")  and  has  a  wife, 
a  river-spirit,  to  whom  the  crocodile  is  sacred.  Seven  men 
and  seven  women  are  slaughtered  to  Tando  amid  ritual 
carousing.  There  is  also  a  Guinea  "  ogre  of  blood,  red  earth 
and  earth-quake,"  and  a  female  monster,  namely  the  malig- 
nant silk-cotton  tree,  Srahmatin.  To  Ellis  these  are  all 
"  spirits,"  but  it  is  questionable  whether  the  powers  are  not 
rather  inherent  in  the  matter  than  separate  from  it.  An 
interesting  development  has  taken  place  in  the  case  of  Bobo- 
wissi. This  intangible  power  above  has  been  virtually  sup- 
planted by  Brahfo,  his  adjutant,  who  now  lives  on  earth  in 
a  grove,  where  the  priests  can  handle  him.  He  is  the  only 
general  Gold  Coast  god. 

In  Dahomy,  the  Fanti  and  Ashanti  powers,  each  sepa- 
rate, have  been  united  into  one  power  of  each  class.  Not 
this  stream-power  and  that  stream-power  are  individually 
recognized,  but  a  water-spirit  or  god  of  water,  etc.  This  is 
due  to  the  greater  state-idea  aided  by  an  organized  priest- 
hood, for  on  the  Gold  Coast  there  are  only  separate  priests 
of  each  village.  But  the  most  interesting  Gold  Coast  novelty 
is  the  Kra.  When  a  man  dies,  his  ghost,  Srahman,  goes  to 
ghost-land,  where  it  lives  in  a  ghost-forest  with  ghost-sheep, 
etc.  There  all  is  as  on  earth,  only  pale  and  shadowy: 
"  One  day  on  earth  is  better  than  a  year  in  Srahman-dazi " 
(ghost-land),  says  a  Tshi-speaker  proverb.  But  while  the 
Srahman  goes  thither,  the  man's  Kra  or  independent  spirit 
goes  abroad  as  a  Sisa,  wandering  free,  or  at  once  seeks 
another  man's  body.  If  it  tries  to  enter  a  man  already  pos- 
sessed by  a  Kra,  the  man  has  a  fit.  Once  in,  if  it  tries  to 


32  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

get  out,  the  man  sneezes ;  hence,  "  good  health "  is  said 
then.  Everything,  man,  sheep,  tree,  has  this  double  soul, 
not  to  speak  of  the  shadow,  which  is  also  a  soul,  perhaps 
man's  first  follower,  and  the  soul  which  is  located  in  an 
animal  while  belonging  to  a  man,  that  is,  the  bush-soul. 

The  cult  of  souls  is  sharply  sundered  from  that  of  nature- 
powers  or  spirits,  which  are  generally  malevolent,  while 
soul-spirits  are  friendly  neighbours  placated  only  as  being 
naturally  ready  to  help  their  own  family.  In  Dahomy,  the 
dead  are  "  watch-family  "  spirits,  usually  of  amiable  char- 
acter. 

The  sacrificial  scale  was  originally  man,  bullock,  sheep, 
and  fowl.  When  drink  is  offered,  evaporation  "  shows  that 
the  spirit  has  taken  the  offering."  In  the  case  of  meat,  the 
spirits  take  only  the  "  spiritual  part."  Rum,  oil,  eggs,  and 
fowl  are  the  food  of  the  lesser  spirits  that  dwell  in  objects 
placed  among  taboo  trees.  The  gods  mentioned  above, 
Bobowissi  and  Tando,  were  originally  local  malignant  spir- 
its demanding  great  bloodshed,  and  sacrifice  to  them  is 
typical;  it  is  always  apotropaic.  The  great  god  is  here 
never  confused  with  the  great  dead  chief,  though  the  lat- 
ter may  become  a  genius  loci.  Only  in  Dahomy  are  the 
bones  of  the  dead  collected,  invoked,  and  preserved.  Here, 
as  the  indwelling  spirit  of  this  or  that  stream  becomes  a 
general  water-god,  so  there  is  also  a  general  love-god,  a 
general  lightning-god  who,  as  in  America,  is  represented 
as  a  thunder-bird.  He  even  has  wives,  hierodoulai,  who 
care  for  his  shrine.  To  Legba,  the  love-god,  are  sacrificed 
goats,  dogs,  and  cocks,  and  circumcision  is  a  rite  in  his 
honour,  while  obscene  mysteries  are  performed  in  his  name. 
Rainbow,1  Fire,  Water,  etc.,  are  here  real  gods.  Trances 

1  The  Rainbow,  as  serpent,  is  also  the  underground  snake  that 
drinks  up  the  water  on  earth.  The  python-snake  gives  wisdom, 
but  he  is  also  a  god  of  treasure  and  of  sensuality,  his  "wives" 
being  especially  debauched.  It  is  impossible  here  even  to  mention 
the  names  of  all  the  Dahomy  gods.  The  Sun  marries  the  Moon; 
stars  are  their  children.  There  is  a  war-god,  a  wind-god,  etc. 
Small-pox  is  a  malignant  fiend.  Four  kings  of  Dahomy  have  lately 


AFRICAN  SPIRIT  LORE  33 

are  entered  into  by  priests  to  influence  ancestral  ghosts  to 
help  their  descendants,  also  a  shamanistic  cult.  Priestesses 
of  these  gods  are  called  their  wives. 

Few  gods  are  personified  enough  to  have  other  wives  than 
priestesses.  There  is  little  morality  in  divinity ;  the  tendency 
is  to  revere  more  the  more  evil  or  harmful  spirits,  on  the 
principle  of  the  Yezedis,  who  worship  the  Devil  because 
only  Satan  would  injure  them. 

Some  of  the  Negroes,  instead  of  burying,  float  their  dead 
on  a  stream ;  but  it  is  not  clear  that  they  have  the  common 
idea  of  one  wide  river  to  cross,  which  appears  in  American 
eschatology,  Redskin  and  Mexican,  and  has  a  Malay  variant, 
also  American,  according  to  which  the  soul  flounders  in 
a  swamp  till  it  perishes  or  finds  egress.  Usually  corpses  are 
buried.  Among  the  Bongos,  men  are  buried  facing  north, 
women  facing  south ;  while  the  Niam-niam  lay  the  man  with 
the  head  eastward;  the  woman,  westward.  The  Fans  and 
Westerners  eat  their  dead ;  but  few  tribes  do  so  regularly  as 
food.  Cannibalism  here  begins  as  a  religious  rite. 

Of  minor  religious  importance  are  the  following  Guinea 
practices.  After  birth,  fowls  are  sacrificed  to  the  head-soul, 
seven  days  after  for  a  girl,  nine  for  a  boy,  and  both  mother 
and  child  are  baptized  with  water  which  has  stood  before 
the  gods,  while  the  priest  repeats  the  child's  name  three 
times,  for  three  and  seven  are  religious  numbers.  Real,  not 
hired,  mourners  may  not  wash  for  three  days.  On  the 
third  day  after  death  the  dead  man  is  three  times  asked  to 
depart.  The  groping  Srahman  soul  of  the  Ashanti  is  guided 
by  a  sacrificed  fowl  to  ghost-land.  No  washing  or  hair- 
cutting  is  allowed  till  the  third  day,  when  the  head  is  shaved. 
This  is  to  keep  the  ghost  away.  There  is  a  general  rite  for 
the  dead  once  a  year,  at  which  the  dead  of  the  past  three 
years  are  all  lamented  and  asked  to  protect  the  tribe.  Red 

been  "deified,"  two  for  their  goodness  and  two  for  their  cruelty. 
The  chief  facts  are  that  real  gods  anyway  are  found  only  in  Dahomy 
and  nature-gods  are  not  confused  with  ancestors,  who  have  differ- 
ent abodes,  etc. 


34  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

is  for  mourning;  white  for  rejoicing.  Cross-roads  harbour 
evil  spirits.  The  spirit-voice  is  "  bird-like,"  an  incompre- 
hensible twitter.  The  Tshi-speaking  priest  is  called  a 
"  dancer."  He  is  carefully  trained  to  show  inspiration, 
"  eye  rolling  and  mouth  foaming."  Each  god  has  a  special 
hymn  and  dance  (compare  the  Salii).  Music  among  the 
Wanik  "  draws  the  spirit " ;  but  it  is  also  a  means  of  exor- 
cism. The  Gold  Coast  prophetess  is  inspired  from  the  grave 
near  which  she  dwells.  There  are  two  forms  of  "  mother  " 
worship,  one  of  the  snake-mother  of  mankind  and  one  of  a 
productivity-spirit  called  Mother,  whom  the  Gallas  call 
Atatie,  perhaps  an  earth-spirit.  The  earth-spirit  is  some- 
times represented  by  a  log-image.  On  the  West  Coast, 
Odudua  is  the  "  nursing  earth,"  wife  of  Obatala,  an  Olarun 
demi-urge  converted  into  "  God  "  by  the  missionaries,  who 
did  not  know  that  his  wife  was  the  representative  of  sensu- 
ality. These  "  life "  spirits  are  usually  celebrated  with 
sexual  orgies.  In  connexion  with  the  mysteries  of  the  same 
sort  is  practised  circumcision,  practically  a  tribe-initiation 
ceremony.1  Rites  for  girls  show,  however,  that  the  spirit- 
element  is  as  strong  as  the  social. 

Ordeals  of  fire  show  no  special  traits ; 2  as  usual,  they 
test  chastity.  Well  represented  is  the  local  "  soul "  idea. 
That  is,  a  special  life-power  resides  in  each  part  of  the 
body,  such  as  hair  or  nails,  and  especially  in  blood  and 
spittle.  Among  the  Jagga,  for  example,  because  spittle  is 
such  a  soul-holder,  the  polite  host  spits  on  his  departing 
guest,  as  who  should  say,  "  I  present  you  with  a  little 

_ *  Circumcision  is  also  practised  in  British  East  Africa,  where  the 
rite  is  usually  performed  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  though  the  boy  may 
be  younger  and  is  sometimes  two  or  three  years  older.  In  all  these 
cases  the  rite  itself  is  a  tribal  initiation-ceremony,  religious  in  so 
far  as  the  youth  is  thus  infused  with  the  spirit-power  of  the  tribe. 
This  is  indicated  also  by  the  "  new  birth,"  which  often  is  drastically 
represented,  and  which  reappears  in  higher  religions  as  regenera- 
tion. So  in  India  one  becomes  "  reborn "  on  entering  the  caste- 
order. 

2  Compare  on  the  fire-ordeal,  Ellis,  The  Tshi-speaking  Peoples  of 
the  Gold  Coast  of  West  Africa,  London,  1887,  p.  138. 


FETISHISM  35 

power."  So  spittle  is  mingled  with  a  goat's  blood  for  sacri- 
fice and  is  curative.  Bone,  blood,  and  grave-dust  commin- 
gled make  "  medicine  "  to  harm  a  foe  and  is  buried  under 
his  threshold.  Toe-nails  and  bones  of  European  saints  still 
conserve  a  similar  power,  but  not  quite  the  same ;  for  the 
saint's  mana  was  a  general  power,  not  sub-divided  into  souls 
as  separate  powers. 

AFRICAN   RELIGION.      II.    FETISH    AND   IDOL 

Fetishism  is  not  a  religion  but  the  expression  of  a  mental 
attitude.  Fear  and  hope  sway  man.  Taboo  is  the  religious 
expression  of  fear;  fetishism,  of  hope.  Applied  originally 
to  the  talismans  of  Portuguese  sailors,  the  word  fetish x 
means  a  charm  to  bring  luck.  Many  writers  use  the  word 
loosely  to  indicate  any  material  object  from  which,  like  a 
mascot,  the  savage  expects  good  luck ;  but  properly  a  fetish 
is  portable  and  it  is  unlike  a  mascot  in  that  it  possesses  power 
and  will  to  bless.  Hence  it  is  coddled,  abused,  prayed  to 
and  stormed  at,  exactly  as  one  would  treat  a  recalcitrant 
spirit  who  may  or  may  not  aid. 

But  at  this  point  there  is  a  very  general  error  to  be  cor- 
rected. All  the  scholars  of  the  animistic  school  say  that  a 
fetish  contains  a  spirit.  On  the  contrary,  the  primitive 
fetish  is  itself  a  quasi-personified  power  or  potency.  It  is 
a  spiritual  power;  it  does  not  contain  a  spirit.  The  object 
itself,  even  when  a  collection  of  objects,  has,  as  a  whole, 
volition.  It  is  almost  impossible  for  the  savage  not  to  im- 
part will  to  anything  which  appears  to  be  an  entity.  Even 
his  monda,  which  is  apparently  an  unconscious  object,  is 
treated,  like  the  grisgris,  joujou,  mokissos,  as  a  conscious 
volitive  power. 

Even  when  the  fetish  will  not  work  and  is  abandoned,  it 

1  Literally  factitious,  feitifo  (fetish)  was  the  sailor's  own  amulet, 
and  by  him  transferred  to  the  similar  charms  he  saw  the  Negro 
wear.  The  word  fctichisme  was  used  by  Bosman  in  his  Description 
of  Guinea  in  1705  and  was  popularized  by  De  Brosses  in  his  Du 
Culte  des  Dieux  fetiches  in  1760. 


36  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

often  retains  sanctity  enough  to  be  preserved  in  god-boxes. 
In  Siberia  (for  fetishes  are  found  everywhere)  a  metal 
plate  is  worn  as  a  fetish  on  the  ground  that  it  is  old  and 
"  therefore  knows  more."  A  natural  divinity  is  often 
treated  exactly  like  a  fetish.  Thus  Xerxes  first  beat  the 
Hellespont  and  then  rewarded  it  with  gifts,  as  Herodotus 
(vii,  35  f.)  tells  us. 

But  even  in  West  Africa,  where  fetishism  is  at  its  best, 
there  is  danger  of  being  led  astray.  Miss  Kingsley,  in  her 
excellent  West  African  Studies,  divides  the  local  fetishism 
into  "  schools."  One  of  these  stresses  the  art  of  maintain- 
ing life,  a  sort  of  medical  school ;  the  second  is  chiefly  con- 
cerned with  the  future  life,  a  sort  of  divinity  school;  the 
third  is  devoted  to  material  prosperity,  a  business  college; 
and  the  fourth  is  academic,  a  school  of  philosophy,  "  mainly 
concerned  with  the  worship  of  the  mystery  of  the  power  of 
Earth/'  These  schools  are  not  tribal  divisions,  nor  secret 
societies,  Poorah,  which  are  a  manifestation  of  fetish  law- 
form. 

But  when  she  speaks  of  fetish-schools,  Miss  Kingsley 
means  the  different  forms  which  religion  takes  in  its  prac- 
tical application  to  life,  for  she  calls  all  religious  phenomena 
"  fetish."  Thus  religious  activity  in  the  Tshi  and  Ewe 
school  is  hygienic;  in  the  Calabar  school  at  Oil  Rivers  the 
chief  object  of  interest  is  reincarnation ;  the  Mpongwe  school 
looks  out  for  worldly  prosperity;  and  the  Fjort  or  Nkissi 
school  is  philosophic.  But  all  these  schools  are  more  or  less 
occupied  with  the  interest  of  each.  There  is  no  sharp  divi- 
sion between  them ;  the  "  school  "  distinction  is  largely  hypo- 
thetical and  in  any  case  there  is  nothing  to  be  gained  by  call- 
ing all  religion  fetishism. 

In  West  Africa  fetishism  is  the  dominating  religious  fac- 
tor. Despite  all  spirit-phenomena,  the  fetishes  "  almost 
monopolize  religious  thought,"  as  Dr.  Nassau  expresses  it. 
The  love-philter  or  the  charm  for  fishing  is  moreover  not 
only  the  chief  object  of  invocation ;  it  is  per  se  a  potency. 
As  the  same  writer  also  says,  the  idea  of  a  spirit  in  the 


FETISHISM  37 

fetish  as  the  efficient  agent  is  a  later  development.     Count- 
less examples  prove  this  assertion. 

Thus  in  employing  a  war-fetish  made  of  bark,  not  a  spirit 
but  the  tree  itself  is  addressed :  "  Thou  tree,  let  not  the 
bullets  hit  me."  The  fisherman  says,  to  his  fetish-mess, 
"  let  me  catch  fish."  In  the  same  way  a  lost  girdle,  though 
not  a  fetish,  is  directly  addressed  as  a  sentient  being: 
"  Girdle,  come  back."  The  animistic  explanation  adopted 
by  Dr.  E.  B.  Tylor  has  led  him  to  define  fetishism  as  "  the 
doctrine  of  spirits  embodied  in,  or  attached  to,  or  conveying 
influence  through,  certain  material  objects."  1  Yet  the  same 
author's  previous  discussion  brought  out  clearly  the  fact 
that  many  fetishes  are  not  controlled  by  spirits.  Indeed, 
Dr.  Tylor  himself  admits  that  he  has  "  selected  "  his  exam- 
ples to  illustrate  his  definition.  Of  course  there  may  be 
a  fetish  not  one  with  the  object.  Thus  the  Eskimo  kills  a 
baby  or  an  animal  and  carries  its  dried  skin,  that  the  mana 
inherent  in  the  animal,  and  still  working  in  the  skin,  may 
help  him  to  game.  This  might  be  regarded  as  a  spirit,  more 
properly  power,  in  the  fetish ;  it  is  the  animal  power  in  a  re- 
duced form.  But  the  usual  fetish,  a  pebble,  a  bit  of  bark, 
or  a  combination  of  natural  objects,  is  regarded  as  in  itself 
potent  and  conscious. 

The  natural,  not  the  artificial,  object  is  the  primitive  fetish. 
Ellis's  opinion,  that  the  fetish  was  originally  a  deified  power 
of  nature  and  that  all  tangible  fetishes  are  priestly  impos- 
tures, is  impossible  to  accept.  Romer  in  1769  recorded  a 
typical  case  that  had  come  under  his  own  observation.  It 
is  worth  more  than  all  modern  theories :  A  Negro  went  out 
in  the  morning  intent  on  effecting  escape  from  danger.  He 
stumbled  on  a  stone,  picked  it  up,  and  escaped  safely.  From 
that  stone  he  never  parted,  but  kept  it  as  his  helper  and 
saviour.  What  has  preceded  good-luck  is  (post  hoc  propter 
hoc)  the  cause  of  good-luck.  If  thereafter  it  fails  to  act, 
it  may  be  placated  or  forced  to  behave  itself.  This  too, 

1  Primitive  Culture,  New  York.  1874,  II.  I45f. 


38  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

though  denied  by  Ellis,  is  indisputable.  It  is  exactly  the 
attitude  taken  by  Egyptians  and  Greeks  toward  their  gods. 
Even  the  later  Romans  destroyed  the  temples  to  punish  the 
gods  on  the  death  of  Germanicus.  So  also  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  a  crew  of  becalmed  Portuguese  sailors  tied 
their  patron  St.  Anthony  to  the  bowsprit  till  he  sent  a 
breeze.  A  Spanish  captain  once  tied  the  Virgin  to  the  mast 
with  the  same  intent.1  There  is,  however,  another  element 
to  be  considered,  which  looks  somewhat  like  simple  abuse, 
but  it  is  not.  Thus  St.  Peter's  image  was  once  immersed,  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  to  cure  a  drought  in  France.  This 
may  have  been  a  case  of  sympathetic  magic,  wetting  the  saint 
to  cause  him  to  wet  the  earth.  But  there  are  cases  enough  to 
show  that  abuse  is  reckoned  a  proper  way  to  control  a  spir- 
itual power.  Russian  peasants  beat  their  holy  pictures  with 
no  other  idea.  So,  as  narrated  in  Kotzebue's  Reise  nach 
Rom,  the  Neapolitans  abused  San  Gennaro,  because  he  failed 
to  stop  the  lava  flowing  toward  the  city.  They  even  called 
him  vecchio  ladrone,  birbone,  and  beat  him. 

The  highest  religions  become  fetishistic  when  a  power  is 
supposed  to  inhere  in  a  material  object,  though  will-power 
is  no  longer  imagined  in  it.  Thus  a  piece  of  the  cross  or 
Koran  invested  with  miraculous  power  for  good  is  practi- 
cally a  fetish.  This  fetish-idea  of  a  material  power  bring- 
ing luck  survives  when  the  southern  American  Negro  car- 
ries a  rabbit- foot,  or  the  farmer's  boy  a  potato  or  chestnut, 
or  when  one  nails  up  a  horseshoe,  the  iron  and  circular  form 
making  the  last  named  a  powerful  fetish.  In  all  these  cases 
the  original  thought  has  been  lost;  what  remains  is  simply 
the  fetish-idea,  the  apparently  ineradicable  idea  that  man  is 
dependent  upon  some  power  not  his  own  for  blessings,  in 
the  hope  of  attaining  which  he  worships  or  treasures  the 
luck-giver. 

A.S  a  completed  complex  system  in  the  hands  of  a  priest- 
hood, African  fetishism  is  rank  with  evil.  The  priest,  who 

x  For  these  and  similar  cases,  compare  Roskoff,  p.  140,  and  Schultze 
pp.  130,  175  (see  Bibliography). 


FETISHISM  39 

is  a  witch-hunter,  uses  the  belief  in  fetish  to  acquire  wealth 
and  power,  intimidating  and  convicting  of  murder  at  will 
through  fetish-oracles  which  he  controls.  One  fetish  set 
against  another  is  an  element  in  political  advancement.  A 
great  chief  controls  many  fetishes  and  therewith  assumes 
many  obligations.  For,  as  rain-maker,  for  example,  he  is 
responsible  for  rain,  and  if  his  fetish  will  not  work,  the 
people  are  liable  to  punish  him,  as  he  would  punish  the 
fetish.  Hence  intrigues,  indictments,  slaughters.-  The 
private  fetish  aids  its  owner  in  finding  a  foe  as  well  as  a 
fish,  and  "  smells  out "  the  injurer,  the  thief,  the  adulterer. 
But  where  fetishism  is  systematized  in  priestly  hands,  this 
power  is  no  longer  in  the  hands  of  the  simple  savage  indi- 
vidual, but  in  those  of  the  crafty  Negro  priest,  who  makes 
the  fetish  act  as  detective,  judge,  and  executioner.  A  good 
example  of  this  is  the  cassia  fetish,  or  bitter  water,  familiar 
to  us  from  the  Mosaic  law,  where,  however,  it  acts  as  agent 
of  a  higher  power.  In  Africa  it  acts  for  itself,  or,  in  fact, 
for  the  priests.  But  the  victim  and  the  ordinary  savage 
do  not  know  that  the  priest  is  exploiting  them.  To  them,  the 
cassia  is  a  sentient  moral  power  pursuing  a  criminal  and 
giving  judgment  from  which  there  is  no  appeal.  The  Si- 
berian peasants  beside  Lake  Baikal  have  a  holy  mountain 
which  acts  in  the  same  way.  If  a  man  is  suspected  of  per- 
jury, he  has  to  climb  the  holy  hill.  No  spirit  of  the  hill 
hurts  him,  but  if  guilty  he  dies  on  the  spot,  the  hill  itself 
being  a  moral  sentient  power  punishing  the  perjurer. 

There  is  then  a  marked  ethical  content  in  fetishism.  In 
Africa  every  law  is  put  under  the  protection  of  a  fetish, 
which  guards  the  law  as  another  fetish  guards  an  individual 
or  a  village.  The  fetish  (in  theory  at  least,  for  we  here 
ignore  priestly  craft)  guards  law  and  righteousness  till,  in 
the  course  of  development,  a  higher  power  directs  "  the  bit- 
ter water  that  causeth  the  curse  "  (Numbers  v.  18) .  So,  too, 
in  witchcraft-trials  the  Lord  was  thought  to  cause  the  witch 
to  float  or  sink;  but  in  simpler  belief  the  pure  water  itself 
rejects  or  casts  up  the  guilty.  If  then  the  fetish  does  not 


40  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

injure  the  innocent,  if  it  defends  the  right,  if  to  it  untruth, 
murder,  and  adultery  are,  as  it  were,  abhorrent,  then  it  is 
clear  that  fetishism  may  be  regarded  as  an  initial  stage  to- 
ward a  belief  in  a  benevolent  and  moral  power.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  priest-controlled  fetish  does  injure  the  inno- 
cent ;  but  even  higher  religions  swerve  from  rectitude  when 
priests  use  them  for  their  own  ends.  Fear,  too,  and  not  love 
influences  the  fetish-worshipper.  But  that  also  is  a  second- 
ary stage.  For  it  is  not  fear  which  first  inspires  the  sav- 
age's belief  in  the  fetish.  It  is  the  hope  of  attaining  a  de- 
sired aim  and  the  idea  that  the  fetish  will  bring  him  to  it. 
One  of  these  aims  is  to  kill  the  injurer.  Then  the  injurer, 
who  shares  the  belief,  is  filled  with  fear.  In  a  word,  fetish- 
ism recognizes  an  ethical  power  which  it  is  hoped  will  lead  to 
the  establishment  of  truth  among  other  aims.  The  fetish  is, 
so  to  speak,  the  agent  of  morality  in  detecting  sin ;  it  never 
detects  virtues. 

A  form  of  so-called  fetishism  gives  purification.  Sav- 
ages have  never  distinguished  between  ill  and  evil.  Purga- 
tive waters  cleanse,  hence  purify ;  that  is,  they  renew  the 
weakened  virtue  or  power  of  a  man.  Water  thus  becomes, 
as  a  fetish-object  in  a  broader  sense,  a  national  purifier, 
often  a  "  war-fetish  "  before  battle,  when  virtue  or  power 
is  most  needed,  or  again  an  annual  purifier,  to  cleanse  and 
renew  after  a  year's  waste.  Our  Creeks  had  such  a  national 
annual  purgation ;  in  Africa  the  water- fetish  serves  as  war- 
medicine.  But  fetish  is  not  really  the  word  to  use  here. 

Fetishes  are  not  usually  specialized.  They  help  in  vari- 
ous ways,  but  sometimes  are  used  in  one  shape  for  one  pur- 
pose. The  Jamaica  Obeah  still  gives  both  oracles  and  im- 
munity from  wounds.  But  the  Hayti  Chemi,  little  figures, 
a  sort  of  teraphim,  are  mainly  oracular  though  also  gener- 
ally preservative.  Obeah  and  Chemi  both  came  first  from 
Africa.  The  "  fetish  of  faithlessness,"  buried  under  the 
Dahomy  threshold,  causes  faithless  wives  to  suffer  exactly 
as  described  in  the  Mosaic  "  law  of  jealousy  " ;  but  the  same 
fetish  has  other  uses.  There  is  another  religious  element 


FETISH  AND  IDOL  41 

which  has  a  counterpart  in  fetishes.  This  is  the  depriva- 
tions and  hardships  to  which  the  worshipper  binds  himself, 
or  to  which  his  parents  have  bound  him  as  a  child.  The 
saints  of  our  church  never  were  more  particular  in  fasting 
and  self-castigation  than  is  the  African  fetish-worshipper. 
At  birth  he  is  pledged  to  do  or  not  to  do  certain  trivial 
things,  like  stepping  over  a  stream,  wearing  long  hair,  spar- 
ing some  animal,  not  eating  some  food;  or  he  takes  such 
vows  upon  himself.  But  in  either  case  nothing  will  induce 
him  to  break  the  obligation.  The  vows  seem  to  have  no 
connection  with  morality  (most  of  them  are  silly),  yet  they 
themselves  are  moral,  since  the  idea  of  renunciation  and  of 
fidelity  to  a  vow  is  there.  The  poor  Negro  "  binds  him- 
self " ;  he  has  a  bond,  a  religion  in  the  sense  of  obligation. 
It  is  ethical  misconduct  to  repudiate  his  vow.1 

The  distinction  between  a  fetish  and  an  idol  is  formal. 
At  the  extremes  there  is  a  difference,  but  there  is  a  point 
where  idol  and  fetish  coalesce.  Behind  the  fairest  Greek 
statue  lies  the  idol,  behind  that  the  carved  log.  The  Damara 
ancestral  fetish  is  a  bough  from  a  tree  sacred  to  the  ances- 
tor ;  while  in  Korea  we  find  a  log  with  a  rounded  top,  proto- 
type again  of  the  true  idol.  Earlier  than  this  may  be  the 
sacred  ground,  such  as  that  where  the  Australian  Churinga 
are  stored,  though  as  in  Lappland  and  Africa  it  may  be  the 
fetish  that  makes  the  ground  holy.  Fetishes  sprinkled  with 
oil,  rum,  or  blood  are  treated  as  idols  are  treated.  Gener- 
ally, however,  the  idol  works  for  the  group  while  the  fetish 
works  for  its  owner  alone.  But  the  fetish  may  operate  for 
the  group,  as  in  Polynesia,  where,  once  a  year,  the  fetish- 

1  Ames,  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience,  Boston,  1910,  p. 
131,  holds  that  primarily  "  the  only  misconduct  was  breach  of 
custom."  This  is  according  to  the  taboo-interpretation  of  religion 
and  ignores  the  individual  as  he  should  not  be  ignored.  So  sacrifice 
is  not  merely  a  redintegration  of  the  group  and  valuable  only  in 
consolidating  the  social  union.  The  single  fetish-worshipper  has  his 
private  purgation  and  sacrifice  which  seem  to  be  as  primitive  as  the 
tribal  rites. 


42  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

stone  works  like  a  national  god  1  through  the  king  for  the 
people.  Also  the  Thugs'  pickax  in  India  is  a  tribal  fetish. 
Phallic  stones  in  India  are  true  fetishes,  but  they  become 
idols  when  carved  to  represent  the  god  himself.  Phallic  ele- 
ments were  in  the  American  "  medicine  "  and  probably  in 
the  Roman  bulla.  They  imparted  power. 

Many  savages  have  no  idols,  Bushmen,  Patagonians, 
Veddas,  Andamanese,  and  Australians,  for  example;  but 
Saussaye  is  wrong  in  saying  that  in  the  lowest  stage  of  sav- 
agery idolatry  is  "  altogether  lacking."  The  savage  of  the 
lower  Amazon  has  carved  figures  on  his  canoe  and,  as  we 
have  seen,  some  of  the  lowest  Africans  have  rude  post- 
idols.  In  the  "  banana  zone  "  idols  are  common,  represent- 
ing men  and  animals  caricatured,  often  without  arms  or  legs. 
Apotropaic  pictures  and  figures  of  the  gods  adorn  the  huts 
or  boats  of  Redskin  and  Polynesian.  Even  the  prehistoric 
art  in  the  caves  of  France  may,  as  Reinach  has  suggested,  be 
for  magical  purposes.  Yet  not  necessarily  so,  for  primitive 
art  may  exist  without  such  intent.  The  Eskimos  during  the 
winter  make  pictures,  but  not  idols,  nor  are  their  pic- 
tures religious.  Eventually  higher  religions  usually  adopt 
idols.  Thus  idols  abound  in  India  after  the  sixth  century 
B.  c.,  and  perhaps  before ;  there  are  possible  allusions  to 
idols  in  the  earliest  literature.  Greece  had  idols  before 
Homer,  and  Homer's  statue  of  the  goddess,  though  unique, 
is  prayed  to  as  an  idol.2  But  the  highest  religions  again  dis- 
card idols  and  pictures  as  objects  of  worship,  to  which  even 
some  Greeks  objected.  Mohammed  discarded  both;  while 
the  Roman  Church  has  expressly  forbidden  (since  787  A.  D.) 
the  worship  of  images.  Ancestors  and  saints  in  pictured  or 
imaged  form  are  found  in  India  and  China  and  probably 
the  Roman  funeral  masks  represent  ancestors.  Ancient 
Egypt  and  modern  New  Zealand  prefer  images  of  ances- 

xLike  a  god,  too,  it  is  kept  wrapped  up,  except  on  the  annual 
occasion  of  manifestation. 

2  For  non-idolatrous  races,  see  D'Alviella,  Des  origines  de 
I'idolatrie  in  the  Revue  de  I'histoire  des  religions,  xii.  2. 


FETISH  AND  IDOL  43 

tors  ;  China  prefers  pictures.  India  painted  and  carved,  in- 
differently, gods,  men,  horses,  and  dogs  and  worshipped 
every  image  it  saw.  Abbe  Dubois  could  not  determine 
whether  his  Hindus  worshipped  the  "  actual  substance  "  or 
the  divinity  in  the  idol.  It  is  merely  a  matter  of  intelli- 
gence. Louis  XL  worships  the  lead  doll  on  his  hat,  as  the 
Hindu  peasants  adore  any  carved  figure.  Only  an  intelligent 
person  distinguishes  between  symbol  and  symbolized.  The 
foreigner  may  make  a  mistake  here.  The  Roman  thought 
the  Quadi  worshipped  their  swords;  in  reality  they  wor- 
shipped the  divinity  carved  thereon.  So  a  Punjabi  today  has 
puja  (worship)1  apparently  of  a  sword  though  really  of  the 
goddess  embossed  on  it.  So,  too,  the  ancient  sword-dance 
was  in  Tiu's  honour,  not  an  idle  exhibition  of  skill. 

A  fetish,  like  a  god,  may  be  no  more  than  the  means  of  a 
meal  and  worshipped  as  such,  for  hunger  is  a  powerful  stim- 
ulator of  religious  feeling.  But  it  is  not  hypocrisy  when 
the  Hindu  clerk  today  bows  to  his  pen  in  the  morning  as 
his  means  of  livelihood.  He  worships  it  as  the  farmer  wor- 
ships his  plough  and  as  the  Toda  worships  his  buffaloes; 
the  implement  of  a  living  is  a  means  of  life  and  that  is  di- 
vine. Habakkuk  remarked  on  this  long  ago  (i.  16)  :  "  He 
sacrificeth  unto  his  net  and  burneth  incense  unto  his  drag, 
because  by  them  his  portion  is  fat  and  his  meat  plenteous." 

The  unimportant  question  as  to  whether  fetish-figures  or 
idols  were  originally  stone  or  wood,  must  be  settled  for 
every  place  separately.2  The  important  question  whether 


indicates  both  veneratio  (doulia)  and  latrio.  A  superior 
man  or  a  god  receives  it.  The  missionary  might  compromise  on 
it  as  a  sign  of  respect,  not  necessarily  "  worship,"  yet  actually  wor- 
ship when  applied  to  a  god,  a  most  convenient  word. 

2  See  especially  the  chapters  on  Greece  and  India  and  America. 
Here  need  be  mentioned  only  the  Lappland  Saidas,  made  indiffer- 
ently of  stone  or  wood.  When  such  a  Saida,  image,  is  of  wood  it 
is  a  sort  of  inverted  xoanon,  that  is,  it  is  a  tree-trunk  placed 
upside  down,  so  that  the  roots  represent  head  and  hair.  The  stone 
Saida  is  a  veritable  herm,  rudely  outlined,  standing  in  the  open, 
which  then  is  holy^  ground.  Saussaye  says  "  only  by  consecration 
does  the  inanimate  image  receive  divine  power  "  ;  but  he  forgets  the 


44  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  fetish-log  and  idol  are  originally  apotropaic  images 
i.  e.,  spiritual  scarecrows,  must  be  raised  but  cannot  be  an- 
swered categorically.  The  Hindu  Rajput  sometimes  wears, 
or  carries,  an  image  of  his  ancestor,  which  originally  he  wor- 
shipped as  the  image  of  a  beneficent  ghost;  but  now- 
adays this  image  is  regarded  merely  as  an  amulet  to  keep 
off  ghosts  and  evil  spirits.1  This  is  an  historical  exam- 
ple of  the  way  a  ghost  may  become  a  defender;  it  needs 
only  a  step  to  make  him  as  defender  rather  a  fearful  or 
scarecrow  type,  as  described  by  Horace  (Sat.  i.  8) :  Olim 
truncus  eram  ficulus  .  .  .  deus  inde  furum  aviumque 
Maxima  formido.  The  connection,  however,  is  close  be- 
tween the  saint  or  Greek  god  who  guards  his  state,  and  the 
images  of  the  Aru  Islanders,  who  "  preserve  the  house  from 
evil  spirits  by  figures  of  snakes,  lizards,  crocodiles,  and 
human  forms,  on  a  post,  and  an  image  of  wood  rudely 
formed."  2  Such  guardians  are  the  Assyrian  Shedu  who 
keep  the  way  to  the  palace;  possibly  also  the  Lagash  cones 
(so  Heuzey)  ;  but  these  have  also  been  interpreted  as  votive 
offerings,  conventionalized  figurines  of  deities  (Jastrow). 
Terminal  stones  appear  at  times  to  have  been  of  this  nature, 
demoniac  forms  to  frighten,  rather  than  protecting  gods. 
But  as  a  general  theory  of  the  origin  of  idols  the  apotropaic 
explanation  will  not  suffice.  For  in  the  ante-idol  stage  of 
the  African  fetish-log,  the  primary  notion  is  not  that  of  a 
frightful  form.  In  fact,  when  it  is  smeared  with  oil  and 
blood,  the  chief  purpose  of  such  a  graven  log  is  to  attract 
benevolent  spirits,  who  come  to  lick  the  blood  and  oil  and  re- 
main, taking  up  their  abode  in  so  attractive  an  object. 

Saida,  which  is  not  consecrated  and  is  divine,  though  notiper  se, 
since  its  power  is  that  of  the  Saivos  or  gods. 

1  Sir  John  Malcolm,  Central  India,  London,  1823,  i.  p.  144. 

2  D.  H.  Kolff,  Voyages  of  the  Dutch  Brig  of  War  Dourga,  Lon- 
don, 1840. 


FETISH  AND  IDOL  45 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Mary    H.    Kingsley,    West    African    Studies,    London,    1897; 

Travels  in  West  Africa,  1899. 
G.  W.  Stow,  The  Native  Races  of  South  Africa,  New  York, 

1905. 
Col.  A.  B.  Ellis,  The  Tshi-speaking  Peoples  of  the  Gold  Coast 

of  West  Africa,  London,  1887;  The  Ewe-speaking  Peoples 

of  the  Slave  Coast,  London,  1890;   The  Yoruba-speaking 

Peoples  of  the  Slave  Coast,  London,  1894. 
R.  H.  Nassau,  Fetichism  in  West  Africa,  New  York,  1904. 
Fritz  Schultze,  Der  Fetischismus,  Leipzig,  1871. 
R.  E.   Dennett,  Notes  on  the  Folklore  of  the  Fjort,  London, 

1898. 

A.  H.  Keane,  Man  Past  and  Present,  Cambridge,  1899. 
F.  Ratzel,  The  History  of  Mankind,  London,  1896-1898. 
Gustav  Roskoff,  Das  Religionswesen  der  rohesten  Naturvolker, 

Leipzig,  1880. 

Goblet  d'Alviella,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1891,  London,  1892. 
Jerome  Dowd,  The  Negro  Race,  New  York,  1907. 


CHAPTER  FOUR 

RELIGIONS   OF  AINUS   AND    SHAMANS 
NATURISM    AND   ANIMISM 

THUS  far  we  have  seen  that  savage  belief  in  superhuman 
powers  is  expressed  either  by  the  worship  of  a  free  spirit, 
which  may  be  a  ghost,  or  by  the  worship  of  a  material  but 
supposedly  sentient  willing  object.  It  is  often  difficult  to 
decide  which,  for  one  or  both  of  two  reasons.  The  savage 
is  wont  to  express  himself  vaguely.  His  attitude,  again,  is 
interpreted  according  to  a  preconceived  opinion.  In  Africa 
there  are  certainly  both  those  who  worship  ghosts,  and  these 
seem  to  be  in  the  majority,  and  those  who  worship  natural 
and  artificial  objects  as  if  they  were  spiritual  beings;  but 
the  two  attitudes  do  not  seem  to  be  mutually  exclusive  and 
sometimes  they  are  confused.  We  shall  therefore  devote 
this  chapter  to  two  types  which  set  the  matter  before  us 
more  clearly.  In  our  interpretation  we  may  safely  be 
guided  by  the  fact  that  actions  speak  louder  than  words,  that 
is,  the  rite  speaks  more  clearly  of  past  belief  than  does  the 
uttered  creed  of  today. 

THE   RELIGION   OF  THE   AINUS 

The  savages  found  in  Japan  and  called  by  themselves 
Ainu,  that  is,  the  "men"  (or  people)  but  mocked  by  the 
Japanese  as  "  dogs,"  aino,  were  hairy-skinned  aborigines, 
who  afterwards  sought  safety  in  Yezo.  Some  are  now  in 
Saghalin.  These  Ainus  were  obviously  influenced  to  some 
extent  by  the  Japanese  (they  still  revere  a  Japanese  hero 
Yoshitsune)  before  they  were  visited,  in  the  last  century, 
by  the  missionary  who  came  to  Yezo  before  the  arrival,  in 

46 


AINUS  AND  NATURISM  47 

1878,  of  Miss  Isabella  Bird.  Though  with  them  but  a  few 
weeks,  Miss  Bird  lived  on  terms  of  intimacy  with  them, 
found  them  very  gentle,  won  their  confidence,  and  drew 
from  them  apparently  honest  replies  to  questions  of  a  re- 
ligious nature.  Ten  years  afterwards,  Rev.  Mr.  Batchelor 
arrived  in  Yezo  and  discovered  in  their  religion  those  higher 
ideas  and  precise  notions  which  Miss  Bird  had  denied  them. 
Mr.  Batchelor  accounts  for  the  discrepancy  by  supposing 
that  the  savages  were  intentionally  reticent  until  he  came. 
But  Miss  Bird  says  they  were  eager  to  tell  her  all  they 
knew.  When  she  asked  about  a  future  life  their  reply  that 
they  had  no  distinct  ideas  on  the  subject  was  evidently  not 
intended  to  guard  a  sacred  mystery.  On  the  other  hand, 
Mr.  Batchelor  etymologizes  the  word  Kamui  (Japanese 
Kami),  though  it  is  a  general  word,  applied  to  any  "  spirit," 
good  or  bad,  as  "  he  who  covers  " ;  argues  from  this  that 
the  Ainus  originally  knew  God  as  Heaven  or  Coverer,  and 
finally,  as  having  known  God,  credits  them  with  having 
been  monotheists,  though  they  are  now  degraded  "  poly- 
theists." 

Apart  from  this  quaint  interpretation  of  Ainuism,  Mr. 
Batchelor  has,  however,  done  excellent  work  in  adding  to 
what  Miss  Bird  and  others  had  observed.  He  has  also 
given  us  some  valuable  legends  which,  though  he  has  not 
noticed  it,  confirm  the  account  of  Miss  Bird. 

The  Ainus  take  little  interest  in  the  ghost.  Food  is  not 
placed  in  or  by  the  grave  and  only  women  have  anything 
to  say  to  the  dead,  whom  they  fear  but  do  not  worship. 
They  have  no  very  definite  belief  as  to  a  future  life.  The 
dead  go  into  animals,  or  go  under  ground,  and  are  supposed 
to  take  with  them  implements  broken,  hence  as  dead,  for  use 
in  the  world  of  the  grave.  Mr.  Batchelor  opines  that  the 
Ainus  think  "  heaven  "  and  "  hell  "  await  respectively  the  vir- 
tuous and  the  wicked ;  but  he  adds  somewhat  naively :  "  To 
hear  the  people  talk,  one  might  be  tempted  to  believe  that 
the  Ainus  think  heaven  itself  to  be  in  Hades."  To  hear 
the  people  talk  was  Miss  Bird's  way  of  understanding  them, 


48  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  her  conclusion  was  that  the  Ainus  vaguely  believed  in 
a  vague  future  in  a  vague  place. 

The  chief  interest  of  the  Ainus  is  in  this  life,  not  in  the 
next,  and  the  powers  they  recognize  are  not  God  and  gods, 
but  nature-powers,  usually  translated  spirits,  but  in  reality 
intelligent  powers  expressed  in  phenomena,  either  natural, 
sun,  sea,  river,  cloud,  tree,  rock,  sand,  disease;  or  artificial, 
hut,  pot,  knife,  etc.  Every  one  of  these  has,  or  rather  is, 
an  intelligent  power,  not  always  good  or  bad,  but  usually 
to  be  made  good  or  bad  by  human  influence  exerted  through 
offerings.  Good  is  what  does  man  good ;  evil  is  what  harms 
him.  Some,  such,  for  example,  as  diseases,  are  always  evil ; 
others  are  always  good.  A  great  body  like  the  sea  or  a  tree 
has  various  good  and  bad  expressions,  the  more  vivid  the 
more  personal.  One  such  power-expression  of  the  sea  is 
almost  a  spirit  who  drowns  a  man ;  another  saves  him.  Less 
vivid,  a  tree  has  a  thousand  powers  or  souls ;  that  is,  every 
limb  and  twig  is  its  own  soul-endued  power.  Expressed  too 
animistically,  a  thousand  or  so  "  spirits  "  are  in  every  tree. 
Many  of  the  so-called  spirits  are  not  free  spirits.  Each  is 
bound  not  only  to  its  own  environment,  a  purely  local 
power,  but  bound  up  with  its  material.  There  is  no  sun- 
spirit,  only  a  spiritized  sun;  no  cooking-pot  spirit,  only  an 
intelligent  cooking  pot.  It  is  not  the  "  spirit "  of  the  dead 
bear  that  is  addressed  but  the  bear  himself,  and  it  is  not 
his  "  spirit "  that  is  sent  away,  but  the  bear.1 

The  savage  is  a  practical  man.  His  religion  consists 
largely  in  making  the  best  of  his  unavoidable  neighbours. 
The  Ainu  honours  most  the  most  useful,  sea,  fire,  and  the 
bear,  each  as  a  spiritual  potency.  He  dislikes  most  the  old 
female  of  the  marsh,  whom  he  does  not  worship  but  calls 
ancestress  or  aunt,  and  who  inflicts  him  with  hideous  dis- 
eases. This  is  a  functional  Potency.  His  ritual  is  scarcely 

1  Stories  of  free  "  spirits "  abound  in  the  collections  made  by 
Batchelor  and  Chamberlain.  They  are  called  "  gods  "  as  well.  Such 
spirits  may  exist,  though  it  is  questionable,  in  the  Ainu's  unaided 
imagination,  but  the  non-free  potency,  not  recognized  at  all  by  these 
authors,  is  the  instructive  element  in  this  religion. 


AINUS  AND  NATURISM  49 

more  than  pouring  libations  of  sake,  the  use  of  (Japanese) 
"  god-sticks,"  and  the  "  worship  "  of  the  useful  food  he 
eats.1  In  sympathetic  magic,  images  called  inoka  are  used 
as  elsewhere  and  call  for  no  special  remark.  One  buries  the 
image  to  bury  the  foe. 

But  the  process  of  "  eating  the  god,"  though  it  is  scarcely 
that,  deserves  serious  attention.  Millet  is  the  chief  cereal. 
Like  every  other  phenomenon  it  is  alive,  intelligent.  As  an 
animal  is  killed,  so  the  millet  is  cooked.  Then  the  cooked 
millet  is  addressed  with  these  words  :  "  O  Millet,  thou  hast 
grown  well  for  us  ;  we  thank  thee  ;  we  eat  thee.""  This  is  as 
near  worship  as  the  Ainu  comes;  but  in  this  simple  ritual 
there  is  a  distinct  recognition  of  the  cereal  as  a  beneficent 
power. 

Mythology  requires  imagination.  It  is  not  well  devel- 
oped among  these  savages.  Millet  does  not  become  Deme- 
ter.  In  fact  there  is  little  real  mythology.  Serpents  come 
from  a  sky-serpent,  probably  lightning  as  a  serpent.  Ants 
come  from  a  putrified  dragon.  The  peeled  wand  or  god- 
stick  is  cut  into  six  shavings  and  six  are  the  worlds  ;  or  there 
are  six  above  and  six  below.  An  eclipse  is  caused  by  an  evil 
power,  but  to  avert  the  eclipse  the  Ainus  fling  up  water,  re- 
garding the  sun  as  fainting  and  needing  revival.  The  fire- 
spirit  can  cure  sickness. 

In  mourning,  hands  are  washed  to  clean  off  the  death- 
infection  and  hair  is  shaved  or  dishevelled  to  escape  notice. 
Graves  are  avoided.  Women  may  not  know  incantations 
and  may  not  utter  their  husbands'  names,  lest  they  acquire 
power  over  the  name-hypostasis  of  the  person.  Evil  spirits 
are  driven  off  by  swinging  knives  ;  as  when  a  man  is  drown- 
ing, the  spirit  being  the  water-evil.  The  couvade  is  prac- 
tised and  tattooing,  but  no  reason  for  it  is  known. 

Ordeals,  of  hot  water,  hot  stone,  drinking  medicated 
water,  are  like  those  elsewhere.  Only  one  is  peculiar.  A 


guard  against  evil  or  wild  beasts  the  skulls  of  bears  and 
foxes  are  placed  upon  poles  in  a  sort  of  sacred  hedge.  The  fox- 
skull  is  also  used  as  an  oracle,  its  jaw  pointing  to  a  thief,  etc. 


50  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

cup  flung  over  the  shoulder  must  land  right  side  up  or  the 
thrower  is  guilty.  Important  is  the  fact  that  in  all  ordeals 
the  sentient  object  decides  the  case;  it  is  not  acting  as  an 
agent  for  a  higher  power.  Among  ordeals  the  most  reli- 
gious is  that  of  the  fire-ordeal,  because  Fire  per  se  has  be- 
come almost  a  goddess.  She  is  the  witness  to  a  promise, 
as  of  marriage,  and  is  especially  invoked  with  a  little 
ritual:  "We  drink  sake  to  thee;  we  give  thee  the  lees; 
keep  evil  from  us ;  send  us  good."  To  make  sure  that  the 
Fire  understands,  a  messenger  is  sent  to  her  in  the  shape 
of  a  burnt  stick.  The  whole  content  of  a  Vedic  Fire-hymn 
is  virtually  contained  in  the  simple  address.  This  message- 
motif  also  is  note-worthy.  So,  as  will  be  seen,  the  dead  bear 
is  really  sent  as  a  messenger  to  the  bear-ancestor. 

In  the  case  of  all  these  spirits  we  should  use  the  word 
power  rather  than  spirit.  The  "  water-cap  spirit,"  for  ex- 
ample, is  really  only  the  potency-filled  cloud  itself.  Very 
clear  is  this  in  the  case  of  the  "  vegetation-demons,"  which 
even  Mr.  Batchelor  recognizes  as  vague  potencies  rising 
like  mist  from  the  ground  and  conceived  as  male  and  fe- 
male powers  of  productivity.  Air-spirits,  potencies,  are 
clearer  because  more  visible  in  effect.  As  the  Ainus  say, 
"they  give  much  trouble"  (storm,  hail,  etc.).  Fuji,  the 
Fire,  is  inseparable  from  her  material  self,  but  as  a  vivid 
friend  is  more  personified.  She  is  even  given  a  husband, 
namely  the  house-guardian,  represented  by  a  stick  placed 
in  the  corner  of  the  hut  where  heirlooms  lie,  not  inaptly 
compared  by  Mr.  Batchelor  with  Penates,  and  possibly,  as 
he  suggests,  ancestral  in  character,  though  this  remains 
doubtful.  Evil  spirits,  to  use  this  word,  as  a  class  are 
called  nitne,  "  oppressive,"  that  is,  troublesome ;  or,  as  Mr. 
Batchelor  puts  it,  "  Satan  and  all  his  angels  are  called  nitne 
kamui." 

It  is  doubtful  whether  the  Ainus  have  any  totemism  at 
all.  The  individual  totem  is  not  a  totem  but  a  fetish  made 
of  a  willow-stick  cut  to  look  like  a  backbone,  and  supposed 
to  preserve  the  owner's  soul,  like  other  such  soul-recepta- 


AINUS  AND  NATURISM  51 

cles.  The  mystery  of  the  soul  and  backbone  is  widespread. 
In  Greece,  for  example,  the  soul  is  in  the  backbone,  and  the 
buried  backbone  is  revived  as  a  snake ;  hence  the  close  con- 
nexion between  the  two  in  Greek  mythology. 

Mr.  Batchelor  says  a  boy  once  vaunted  himself  to  be  the 
descendant  of  an  eagle  and  offers  this  as  a  possible  example 
of  a  family-totem.  But  apparently  only  one  boy  ever 
thought  of  such  a  thing  and,  in  any  case,  descent  from  an  ani- 
mal does  not  show  totemism.  No  animal  or  vegetable  clans 
exist.  There  remains  the  "  national  totemism  "  shown  by 
the  most  celebrated  item  of  Ainu  religion,  the  bear-cult. 
This  is  not  totemic,  for  the  bear  is  not  a  clan-brother  and 
his  blood  is  drunk  only  incidentally,  and  then  not  always,  by 
a  few  people ;  more  to  get  vigour  than  to  renew  clan-life. 
The  bear  is  called  divine  and  is  worshipped;  but  any  ani- 
mal is  "  divine  "  enough  to  be  called  so  to  its  face.  Never- 
theless, in  that  the  bear  is  slain  by  the  people,  and  his 
body  is  shared  by  all,  the  ritual  certainly  smacks  of  totem- 
ism. 

In  brief,  the  ceremony  is  as  follows :  A  cub  is  raised  with 
care,  well  fed,  and  then  at  the  stated  time  addressed  by  its 
slayers  thus :  "  O  divine  cub,  who  art  come  into  the  world 
to  be  hunted  by  us,  we  pray  to  thee.  We  have  nourished 
thee  well,  because  we  love  thee,  and  now  we  are  sending  thee 
to  thy  father  and  mother.  Do  thou  speak  well  of  us  to 
them.  Tell  them  how  well  we  have  nourished  thee  and  then, 
next  season,  come  back  to  us  and  we  will  slay  thee  again." 
Then  women  dance  about  him,  and  men  slay  him,  careful 
not  to  let  the  blood  touch  the  ground,  and,  cutting  off  his 
head,  they  place  some  of  his  own  body  before  it  with  other 
edibles,  that  the  bear  himself  may  share  the  feast,  while  they 
pass  around  the  "cup  of  boiled  bear"  (brains  and  sake}, 
which  all  must  at  least  taste.  Then  Bruin  is  sent  away  by 
having  his  head  placed  on  the  "  sending  pole,"  around  which 
men  and  women  dance.  The  name  of  the  whole  ceremony  is 
the  "  sending  away."  It  is  almost  identical  with  that  of  the 
Lillooet,  in  British  Columbia,  who  mourn  the  bear  they  kill 


52  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  raise  his  head  on  a  pole,  invoking  him  to  send  more  bear- 
food  ;  likewise  a  non-totemic  clan-rite. 

The  Ainu  feast  is  also  one  of  invigoration  and  productivity 
rather  than  of  blood-communion.  Nothing  in  the  ritual  sug- 
gests clan-brotherhood  with  the  cub  except  the  cup-cere- 
mony, but  even  then  nothing  is  said  to  indicate  this.  Fos- 
ter-kinship with  the  bear  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  cub  is 
always  suckled  by  one  of  the  women.  The  whole  object 
of  the  feast  is  to  get  vigour  from  the  bear  for  now  and  to 
secure  more  bear  hereafter.  Hence  the  "  sending  away." 
But,  if  not  totemistic,  this  rite  approaches  closely  the  Cau- 
casus type  of  totemism,  in  which  the  clan  regularly  kill  the 
totem  for  food  yet  on  special  occasions  sacrifice  and  eat  one 
member  of  the  animal  totem-clan.  This  again  differs  from 
the  Egyptian  and  Toda  type,  in  which  the  totem  has  become 
more  holy  than  wholesome  and  is  not  used  as  food. 

The  Ainus  have  neither  gods,  priests,  nor  temples.  Ac- 
cording to  Rev.  Mr.  Batchelor,  however,  "  they  see  the  hand 
of  God  in  everything.  The  world,  indeed,  is  His  temple, 
Nature  His  Book,  every  man  His  priest,  and  each  chief  His 
high  priest,"  and  not  only  this  but  they  possess  "  a  belief 
in  one  Supreme  God  and  a  doctrine  of  mediation."  As  was 
pointed  out  in  the  last  chapter,  it  is  of  interest  to  find  the 
prototype  of  higher  religion  in  the  lower,  but  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  impute  the  technicalities  of  theology  to  the  savage. 
What  Mr.  Batchelor  means  is  that  the  bear  is  sent  away  to 
its  mother  with  a  message,  and  the  burnt  stick  thrust  into  the 
fire  acts  as  messenger  to  the  fire ;  ergo,  these  savages  have  a 
"  doctrine  of  mediation."  1 

Thus  the  vital  facts  in  primitive  Ainu  religion  are  that 
these  savages,  whether  or  not  they  believe  in  spirits  not  phe- 
nomenal, do  worship  phenomena ;  that  they  treat  their  grain 

1  Professor  Chamberlain  and  Mr.  Howard  have  followed  Mr. 
Batchelor's  interpretation,  though  their  Ainus  are  not  the  same. 
Mr.  Howard's  are  in  Saghalin  and  his  understanding  of  them  was 
quite  different  till  Mr.  Batchelor  showed  him  how  to  interpret. 
A  similar  attempt  has  been  made  to  interpret  the  Ainus  as 
"Aryans"  in  race  and  language;  but  this  also  has  failed. 


SHAMANISM  53 

as  a  sentient  being ;  that  they  give  food  and  drink  to  fire  as 
to  a  person,  to  propitiate  it ;  that  they  "  send  away  "  not  a 
spirit  but  the  bear,  to  propitiate  the  bear-people  and  get  more 
bear  to  eat;  and  that  they  have  no  cult  of  ghosts.  Of  sec- 
ondary importance  is  it  that  from  the  Japanese  and  from 
Christians  they  have  absorbed  some  religious  paraphernalia 
and  some  higher  ideas,  vaguely  understood  and  retained,  just 
as  the  Negroes  have  seized  and  held  the  idea  of  God  given 
them  by  others. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Miss  Isabella  Bird  (Mrs.  Bishop),  Unbeaten  Tracks  in  Japan, 

London,  1878-1881. 
H.  Von  Siebold,  Ethnologische  Studen  uber  die  Aino,  Berlin, 

1881. 
B.  Scheube,  Der  Barencultus,  contained  in  Romyn  Hitchkock's 

Ainos  of  Yeso,  Japan,  Report  of  the  National  Museum, 

1890. 

Rev.  John  Batchelor,  The  Ainu  of  Japan,  New  York,  1895. 
B.  Douglas  Howard,  Life  with  the  Trans-Siberian  Savages,  of 

Saghalin,  London,  1893. 
A.  W.  S.  Landor,  Alone  with  the  Hairy  Ainu,  London,  1893. 

SHAMANISM 

Under  this  name  is  understood  a  certain  religious  attitude 
conspicuous  among  sundry  Mongolian  tribes  but  found  in 
many  parts  of  the  earth.  The  word  shaman  is  in  fact 
loosely  used  of  almost  any  savage  witch-doctor  who  becomes 
frenzied  and  has  communication  with  spirits.  In  its  orig- 
inal form  it  appears  to  be  a  corruption  of  the  Sanskrit 
Shramana,  which,  indicating  a  disciple  of  Buddha,  among 
the  Mongolians  became  synonymous  with  magician.  Sha- 
manism today  is  the  name  properly  applied  to  the  religion  of 
certain  Ural-Altaic  peoples,  Finns,  Hungarians,  Turks,  Mon- 
golians, Tunguse,  but  chiefly  those  in  the  eastern  part  of 
northern  Asia.  Christianity,  Buddhism,  and  Mohammedism 
have  affected  the  purity  of  their  beliefs  and  at  present  Sha- 
manism is  best  represented  by  the  Tunguse,  who  with  the 
exception  of  the  Manchus  are  all  Shamanists.  All  Shaman- 


54  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ists  have  substantially  the  same  view  of  the  world.  Accord- 
ing to  it,  heaven,  earth,  and  the  place  under  the  surface 
of  the  earth  make  a  three-fold  spiritual  realm.  On  and 
above  earth  live  good  spirits ;  below  or  within  earth  live  evil 
spirits,  presided  over  by  Erlik,  originally  a  super-terrestrial 
man  condemned  to  hell  because  he  wished  to  be  equal  to  the 
Creator,  Kaira  Kan,  who  is  father  and  mother  of  mankind 
and  lives  in  the  highest  of  the  seventeen  realms  of  light. 
These  are  opposed  to  the  realms  of  hell,  seven  or  nine  in 
number.  With  Kaira,  in  the  upper  world,  live  the  great 
Kans  (lords),  gods,  good  spirits,  and  blessed  ghosts.  Below 
earth  live  evil  demons,  kobalds,  goblins,  gnomes,  swan- 
maidens,  and  unblessed  ghosts.  After  Erlik's  fall,  Kaira 
created  earth-men,  the  nine  ancestors  of  the  nine  races. 
Gods  emanating  from  Kaira  are  those  living  below  him,  for 
example,  Bai  Yulgen,  in  the  sixteenth  heaven,  Kysagan,  in 
the  ninth,  and  Mergen,  who  with  the  (mother)  sun  lives  in 
the  seventh  heaven,  while  the  (father)  moon  lives  in  the  fifth 
heaven.  There  is  a  demiurge  creator  in  the  fifth  and  Bai 
Yulgen's  two  sons  are  in  the  third  heaven.  In  this  third 
heaven  live  also  the  souls  of  the  blessed,  and  there  are  the 
"  sea  of  milk,"  or  the  spring  of  all  life,  and  the  mountains  of 
the  gods.  Earth  itself  is  Jersu,  a  community  of  spirits  as 
an  animate  whole,  at  whose  navel  lives  Jo  Kan,  a  spirit 
whose  power  is  almost  equal  to  that  of  Kaira,  besides  whom 
there  are  other  high  lords,  seventeen  in  number,  like  the 
seventeen  mountains  and  seventeen  seas.  Where  the  seven- 
teen seas  unite,  lives  the  Ocean  Kan.  There  is  also  an  Altai 
Kan  or  folk-god.  Only  seven  of  these  lords  have  the  same 
names  everywhere;  the  other  ten,  perhaps  later  growths, 
are  named  differently  by  different  tribes.  They,  like  the 
heavenly  lords,  are  helpers  of  men  and  creative  powers ;  but 
only  the  earth-lords  can  be  approached  directly  by  ordinary 
men,  who  offer  them  gifts  or  revere  them  by  casting  a  stone 
on  a  pile  or  sing  them  a  song  of  praise.  To  honour  these 
kindly  Jersu,  earth-powers,  there  is  no  need  of  an  inter- 
mediary priest. 


SHAMANISM  55 

Far  different  is  it  with  the  great  lords  of  the  realms  above 
and  within  earth.  These  can  be  approached  only  through 
the  mediating  spirits  of  the  dead.  Thus  the  good  gods 
above  must  be  approached  through  the  Somo,  the  nine  an- 
cestors that  guard  men.  But,  and  herein  lies  the  key  of 
Shamanism,  only  certain  families  can  control  the  Somo  and 
other  spirits.  The  power,  however,  is  not  inherited  but 
inherent  in  certain  families.  That  is,  the  power  is  not 
passed  on  from  father  to  son,  but  each  son  of  the  favoured 
family  is  in  turn  seized  with  an  ecstasy  and  becomes  in- 
spired, till  in  this  state  he  is  able  to  act  in  the  capacity  of 
an  intermediary  between  man  and  the  spirits.  These  are  the 
Shamans.  In  producing  rain,  they  sometimes  call  on  Kaira 
Kan  to  open  the  sky,  but  always  at  the  same  time  they  call 
on  the  forefather.  In  other  words,  Kaira  Kan  may  be 
omitted,  but  never  the  ghost.  Shamanism  is  therefore  pri- 
marily a  cult  of  spirits,  conceived  as  ancestral  ghosts. 

Despite  the  theory  of  gods  and  the  lofty  cosmogony,  which 
may  be  due  in  part  to  Buddhistic  influence,  the  spirits  in- 
voked are  not  generally  of  the  upper  but  of  the  lower  world. 
Erlik  himself,  the  prince  of  evil  and  of  death,  is  called 
Father  Erlik,  because  though  a  foe  of  man,  "  all  men  belong 
to  him  and  he  at  last  takes  their  lives."  To  Erlik  are  at- 
tributed all  misfortunes,  from  poverty  to  death,  and  because 
of  this  power  man  honours  him,  calls  him  father,  and  makes 
offerings  to  him.  Although  the  spirits  of  light  are  more 
powerful  than  those  of  darkness,  the  former  need  little  at- 
tention, because  they  are  good  and  kind ;  whereas  evil  spirits, 
if  not  appeased,  would  constantly  do  injury.  In  consequence, 
the  shamanistic  cult  consists  for  the  most  part  in  placating 
evil  spirits.  In  this  it  resembles  the  cults  of  Akkadians  and 
Dravidians;  but  its  special  feature  lies  in  the  close  connex- 
ion between  man  and  his  ancestors  through  the  ecstatic 
Shaman.  The  Shaman's  power  is  not  his  own  but  that  of 
the  Manes  infused  into  him.  He  is  not  possessed  by  the 
devil  but  by  the  spirit  of  his  ancestor.  When  thus  possessed 
he  ascends  to  heaven  or  descends  to  hell  (ancestral  spirits 


56  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

being  in  both  spheres)  and  influences  the  powers  as  he  will. 
The  Shaman  also  arranges  the  sacrifice,  purifies  the  house  of 
death  by  driving  forth  the  ghost,  and  acts  also  as  physician, 
weather-prophet,  and  soothsayer.  All  these  offices  belong 
to  his  kamlanie  or  shamanizing  (kam,  Turkish  for  Shaman). 
His  indispensable  instrument  is  a  drum  with  which  to  coerce 
spirits ;  but  too  he  is  usually  adorned  with  bits  of  iron  and 
other  apotropaic  tags  and  bobs,  perhaps  of  fetish  character.1 
Though  rather  feared  than  liked,  he  is  looked  upon  as  a  ne- 
cessity, since  apart  from  obtaining  good  things  from  the 
spirits,  man's  happiness  depends  upon  the  Shaman's  ability 
to  satisfy  spirits  of  both  classes,  for  the  following  reason. 
When  a  man  is  born,  Bai  Yulgen  sends  a  good  spirit,  first 
to  draw  his  life  from  the  sea  of  milk  and  then  to  guard  and 
guide  him.  But  at  the  same  time  Erlik  sends  a  devil  to 
mislead  him.  After  death  both  spirits  accompany  the  soul 
to  the  judgment-hall  below  and  as  one  has  followed  the  sug- 
gestions of  either  spirit  one  joins  the  blessed  or  damned. 
But  virtue  is  not  enough  to  give  happiness,  which  consists 
in  possessing  good  things,  for  both  in  heaven  and  hell  the 
spirits,  as  in  Egypt,  are  envious  and  desire  his  goods,  which 
they  may  steal  from  him  if  not  placated  by  means  of  a 
Shaman. 

A  sacrifice  to  Erlik  can  be  made  anywhere,  but  one  to 
Bai  Yulgen  must  be  made  with  more  or  less  secrecy  in  a 
grove.  The  ceremony  lasts  three  nights.  On  the  first,  a 
horse  is  slain,  without  bloodshed ; 2  on  the  second  the 
Shaman  ascends  or  descends  to  the  spirit-world  by  mystic 
ceremonies,  in  which  the  Shaman  rides  the  pur  a  (soul)  of 
the  slaughtered  horse.  At  various  stages  he  utters  prophe- 

xThey  do  not  seem  to  be  used  as  real  fetishes,  however,  but  as 
ghost-scarers  simply. 

2  So  the  Ainu  bear  in  strangled,  and  the  Hindu  horse  in  the  old 
Vedic  sacrifice.  In  none  of  these  cases,  however,  is  the  ground 
made  taboo  by  the  blood.  Possibly,  as  with  the  Ainus,  where  it  is 
wiped  off  very  carefully,  the  ground  would  be  so  taboo  that  it  is 
safer  to  regard  it  as  not  touched  if  the  blood  is  immediately 
erased. 


SHAMANISM  57 

cies  in  an  ecstatic  condition  till  he  reaches  the  abode  of  the 
spirit  sought,  whom  he  beseeches  to  ward  off  evil  or  grant 
some  good.  The  third  night  is  devoted  to  carousing  with 
the  offering  of  libations.  It  is  a  matter  of  indifference  to 
the  Shaman  whether  he  go  up  to  heaven  or  down  to  hell. 
Shamanism  therefore  is  not  purely  diabolical,  a  devil-wor- 
ship, as  it  is  often  considered,  but  a  cult  of  spirits ;  though 
the  office  of  ghost-scarer,  who  purifies  the  house,  is  as  im- 
portant as  any  and  one  most  frequently  exercised.  To  bless, 
to  offer  homage  to  the  Jersu,  even  to  prophesy  and  make 
rain  are  in  the  capacity  of  others,  but  only  a  Shaman  can 
make  sacrifice  to  the  great  gods  and  devils  and  purify  a 
house.  Yet,  unless  the  influence  of  unlucky  stars  must  be 
averted,  the  Shaman  has  no  part  in  ceremonies  of  birth, 
marriage,  or  death.  There  is  practically  no  worship  of  ma- 
terial objects.  It  is  clear  that  most  of  the  cosmogony  and 
ranks  of  gods  are  secondary.  Shamanism  is  at  bottom 
ghost-worship,  a  cult  of  ghosts  or  ancestral  spirits  as  funda- 
mental as  is  the  nature-power-cult  of  Ainuism.  To  be  no- 
ticed also  is  the  prominence  of  the  evil  spirit  and  the  neces- 
sary extasis  of  the  mediating  priest,  who  works  only  through 
spirit-possession,  the  spirit  being  always  ancestral,  never  a 
nature-spirit. 

If  we  strip  off  the  Buddhistic  accumulation,  which  from 
the  name  of  the  Shaman  to  the  role  of  the  Evil  One  are 
secondary  elements,  we  get  to  the  foundation  fact,  which  is 
that  the  ancestral  spirit  is  a  friendly  creature,  who  watches 
over  his  family  and  communicates  with  them  by  means  of 
an  inspired  mediator.  Now  if  we  take  a  still  purer  case  of 
Shamanism,  among  an  utterly  simple  people,  we  find  this 
result  abundantly  confirmed.  Such  a  case  is  to  be  found 
among  the  Veddas  of  Ceylon  in  their  most  uncorrupted 
state.  Here  the  religious  instinct  expresses  itself  in  an  un- 
questioning belief  that  the  father  when  dead  still  lives, 
guards,  and  guides  his  family  in  the  hunt;  and  that  he  is 
communicated  with  through  a  common  meal  and  the  medi- 
ation of  an  ecstatic  Shaman,  whose  dervish  dance  by  auto- 


58  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

intoxication  makes  this  actor  imagine  that  he  is  really 
speaking  as  possessed  by  the  dead  Yaku  (ghost).  Likewise 
in  the  arrow-dance,  the  aid  of  the  ancestor  is  sought  by  the 
same  means.  Here  also  it  is  assumed  that  the  ancestor  is 
well-disposed.  Only  contact  with  the  outer  world  has 
taught  the  Veddas  that  the  country  is  full  of  inimical  Yaku.1 

LITERATURE 

W.  Radloff,  Aus  Siberien,  26.  ed.,  Leipzig,  1893. 

Mikhailovski,  Shamanism,  Journ.  Anthrop.  Inst.,  xxiv.,  pp.  fyf., 

1895. 
C.  G.  Seligmann,  The  Veddas,  Cambridge,  1911. 

1  Several  features  deserve  more  than  the  allusion  permitted  by 
space,  such  as  the  importance  of  hair-vigour  in  the  Shaman,  the 
instruction  given  to  the  "  fit "  pupil,  and  the  gradual  exaltation 
in  Vedda  belief  of  one  greatest  spirit  to  godhead.  The  sacrificial 
communal  meal  becomes  so  charged  with  spirit-power  that  the 
remnant  is  even  rubbed  upon  the  noses  of  the  hunting-dogs,  not  to 
speak  of  the  persons  of  the  family,  to  heighten  their  ability  (compare 
the  Hindu  ucchishta,  the  potent  remnant  of  sacrifice).  The  original 
belief  as  to  the  dead  seems  to  have  been  that  only  the  stronger 
spirits  survive  to  an  indefinite  period ;  others  fade  out,  prohably 
after  a  few  generations.  The  etymology  of  Shaman  given  above  is 
not  certain,  though  probable. 


CHAPTER  FIVE 

POLYNESIAN   RELIGIONS 
I.   SPIRITS,    MYTHS,    AND   CHARMS 

THE  spirits,  generally  malevolent,  of  the  Polynesians  are 
strongly  anthropomorphic.  So  romantic,  and  at  the  same 
time  realistic,  is  the  conception  of  these  spirits  that  Poly- 
nesian mythology  reminds  one  of  the  heroic  tales  of  Greek 
gods  and  goddesses.  In  both  there  is  a  poetic  element  which 
beautifies  the  ugliness  of  the  inner  belief  in  treacherous, 
filthy,  cowardly  gods.  We  enter  here  a  different  plane  from 
that  of  the  Negro's  religion,  one  reflecting  the  higher  intel- 
lectuality of  the  Ocean  race. 

The  Polynesian  spirits  are  somewhat  confused  with  ghosts, 
yet  they  are  formally  distinguished  from  them  and  in  fact 
are  generally  nature-spirits,  not  usually  natural  objects  wor- 
shipped as  such,  but  objects  manifesting  free  spirits  con- 
ceived as  almost  human  in  form  and  character.  To  them 
as  malignant  beings  are  ascribed  not  only  disease,  death, 
and  great  misfortune,  but  even  the  slightest  untoward  acci- 
dent. This,  too,  is  Greek.  In  the  account  of  the  funeral 
games  in  the  Iliad,  every  hero  whose  chariot  upsets  or  who 
has  a  fall  due  to  his  own  lack  of  skill,  lays  it  to  the  inter- 
ference of  some  malicious  spirit  (goddess).  The  Tahitians 
ascribe  the  slightest  misfortune  to  a  devil's  ill-will;  the 
Maori  gods  are  great  devils,  who  appear  in  lightning  and 
storm  but  differ  only  in  size  from  the  little  devils  in  noxious 
insects  and  reptiles :  "  thick  as  mosquitoes  the  devils  sur- 
round us."  But  some  do  good  at  times  or  are  merely  ca- 
pricious. In  general,  Polynesian  spirits,  though  fickle,  are 
by  predilection  malign.  Some  undoubtedly  are  now  ghosts 

59 


60  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

that  were  originally  nature-powers ;  for,  like  the  Finns,  who 
have  euhemerized  their  gods,  the  Polynesians  show  a  tend- 
ency to  adopt  into  the  family  some  non-ghostly  spirits. 

There  are  even  traces  of  the  actual  worship  of  natural 
objects.  Prayers  and  offerings  are  addressed  to  reptiles,  to 
rocks,  to  rivers,  and  to  trees,  quite  directly,  and  trees  are 
adorned  with  red  ochre  and  cloths  as  signs  of  worship;  while 
the  word  religion  is  said  to  mean  "  sacred  tree."  1 

On  the  other  hand,  the  secret  societies  indicate  a  cult  of 
ghosts.  The  ancestors  were  imagined  as  reptilian  troglo- 
dytes and  both  they  and  their  descendants  as  ghosts  give 
fertility.  The  ghost-form  is  almost  exclusively  the  object 
of  the  Melanesian  Tamate  (society),  but  the  Melanesians 
are  not  so  primitive  as  the  Polynesians.  Yet  the  usual  idol, 
a  stick  adorned  with  a  carved  head,  and  put  in  the  ground 
as  a  tutelary  power  to  mark  property-lines,  is  said  to  repre- 
sent gods  not  ghosts.  Totemism,  also,  is  weakly  represented, 
perhaps  in  genuine  form  only  in  Samoa.  Papuans  and  Sol- 
omon Islanders  are  related  to  animals  but  not  totemistically. 
So  the  common  worship  of  eels  is  not  a  sign  of  totemism. 
Animals  appear  as  incarnations  of  both  ghosts  and  gods. 
Thus  the  lizard  is  a  spirit  or  god,  not  a  ghost-spirit.  There 
is  also  a  pronounced  litholatry  with  some  phallic  cult,  which 
may  also  be  reflected  in  the  Putete  circumcision-ceremony 
of  New  Zealand  and  the  corresponding  Fiji  rite. 

Gods  in  any  case  have  a  divinity  synonymous  with  devilry. 
Thus  the  Atua  (god)  is  a  spirit  of  disease,  plague,  and 
thievery ;  atua  ika  are  fish-gods  or  reptiles ;  and  a  sea-mon- 
ster, he  ika,  was  regarded  as  a  dead  chief  famed  for  cruelty 
in  life  and  regarded  as  still  more  malignant  in  death.  De- 
partmental gods  are  found  here,  spirits  presiding  over  pains 
in  the  head,  in  the  breast,  child-birth,  etc.,  and  Maru  is  at 
once  a  god  of  war  and  a  disease-demon,  whose  priests  are 
fat  because,  though  insatiable,  he,  like  an  African  god, 
leaves  the  gross  part  of  the  sacrifice  to  them.  It  is  imma- 
terial whether  one  calls  these  spirits  gods  or  devils. 

1  Compare  Taylor,  Te  Ika  a  Maui,  London,  1870,  p.  104. 


POLYNESIAN  SPIRITS  AND  CHARMS 


6l 


The  root-idea  of  divinity  is  expressed  by  "  pith,"  that  is, 
power.  That  is  the  reason  why  there  is  no  distinction  be- 
tween god  and  devil;  a  spirit  has  pith  or  power,  whether 
good  or  bad.  Moreover  it  is  only  a  question  of  degree 
whether  man  is  not  divine.  A  man  losing  heart  is  said  to 
"  lose  his  pith"  (his  spirit),  the  same  word  translated  "  di- 
vinity." In  the  poetic  cosmogony  the  gods  are  creative 
spirits.  Before  heaven  was  uplifted  from  earth,  there 
were  only  "  Night  and  dark  gods  " ;  they  were  succeeded  by 
Rangi,  Heaven,  and  Papa,  Earth,  the  parents  of  men.  For 
Rangi  created  man  in  his  own  image  by  kneading  clay  with 
his  own  blood  (life).1  But  other  gods  were  makers  (cre- 
ators) ;  Tawiri,  of  storms;  Tane,  of  trees  (he  is  also  the 
general  male  principle  of  generation)  ; 2  Tangaroa,  of  fish, 
but  also  of  day.  This  last  god  has  one  sacred  grove  and,  by 
some  scholars,  is  regarded  as  the  chief  god,  because  most 
widely  recognized.  Other  tales  ascribe  to  Ra  the  origin 
of  other  gods  and  of  men  and  mountains.  On  the  other 
hand,  Turi  is  a  demi-god  ancestor  and  Maui  a  culture-hero. 
An  indigenous  worship  of  stars  is  referred  to  the  effort  of 
one  native  "  founder "  of  a  special  religion.  Ordinarily, 
stars,  like  clouds,  are  souls  of  heroes;  the  more  foes  they 
have  slain  the  brighter  they  are.  Stars,  moon,  sun,  etc., 
are  denizens  of  ten  heavens. 

Opposed  to  Night  (chaos)  of  the  underworld,  the  chief 
gods  are  those  of  day  and  light,  Motoro,  light  and  love ;  Ra, 
the  sun ;  Vatea,  another  "  father  of  gods  and  men,"  half 
fish  and  half  human,  without  grove  or  idol  or  sacrifice,  be- 
cause he  represents  what  to  the  Polynesian  is  illimitable 
majesty,  Ocean.  Probably  different  clan-  or  district-gods 
account  for  the  variety  of  creators  of  the  same  things.  To 
turn  to  the  lower  mythology,  there  are  small  white  fairies, 
spirits  of  hill  and  mist  (quite  Celtic),  who  seize  women; 

1  Taylor,  op.  cit,  p.  117.     Rangi  is  creator;  Rongo  is  war-god. 

2  This  important  principle  is  complemented  by  the  female  prin- 
ciple,   regarded    as    destructive,    like    the    Chinese    sex-opposites. 
Compare   also    the   destructive   female   power   in   the   Hindu    Kali, 
"wife"  of  the  god  of  life  and  destruction. 


62  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  giants,  not  ghosts,  of  the  caves  and  mountains,  some- 
times represented  as  dragons,  who  cause  land-slides.  To 
the  dark  spirit  Night  the  Polynesians  pay  as  much  reverence 
as  to  the  light-gods.  Another  spirit,  elsewhere  poetical, 
here  real,  is  Echo,  who  -has  a  cult.  Meteors  are  souls; 
eclipse,  a  demon;  the  gods,  like  men,  carry  clubs  and  fight, 
light  against  dark.  The  dark  half  of  the  month  is  sacred 
to  Iro,  god  of  murderers  and  thieves,  who  has  a  charm-song : 
"  Let  deep  sleep  overcome  this  house ;  sleep  on,  owner  of 
the  house;  threshold,  sleep  on;  insects  of  the  house,  sleep 
on,"  etc.,  much  like  one  of  the  Vedic  Hymns  (Rig  Veda,  vii. 

55  ).1 

Many  Polynesian  myths  resemble  those  of  other  lands. 

Eneene  seeks  below  earth  the  beloved  wife  who  has  died 
and  brings  her  back ;  the  moon-goddess  has  intercourse  with 
her  human  lover ;  Tawaki  stamps  a  hole  through  the  stone 
(sky)  and  lets  out  the  waters  above,  causing  a  deluge ;  then, 
killed  by  his  brothers,  he  is  resurrected  and  ascends  to 
heaven  again.2 

No  lofty  sentiment  inspires  the  blessed  who  sit  in  heaven. 
Their  chief  delight  is  to  mock  and  drop  filth  on  those  below 
in  hell  and  watch  them  in  their  struggles  to  get  out.  Ngaru 
was  a  hero  who  overcame  the  "  demon  of  the  sky,"  pre- 
venting him  from  further  destruction  of  men,  for  whom 
he  used  to  angle.  Most  of  man's  tormentors,  however, 
came  out  of  an  opening  on  earth,  till  fair  Tiki  stopped  it 
with  her  own  (sacrificed)  body,  "  for  love  of  mankind." 
This  opening  leads  to  Avaiki,  where  base  men's  souls  are 
cooked  and  eaten  by  the  fiend  Miru.  Originally  Avaiki  was 
"down"  west  (sun-down).  Until  it  acquired  the  mean- 
ing of  down  below  (earth),  all  shades  went  to  Avaiki;  the 
feet  of  the  buried  still  lie  westward.  Later  only  nobles  or 
braves  went  thither,  "  following  the  sun  "  to  heaven ;  com- 
mon men  went  to  the  world  below,  to  be  "  eaten  by  gods." 

1  Gill,  Myths  and  Songs  from  the  South  Pacific,  London,  1876, 
p.  150. 

2  Taylor,  op.  cit.}  p.  101. 


POLYNESIAN  SPIRITS  AND  CHARMS  63 

Annihilation  awaits  all  but  the  brave.  But  some  still 
think  the  soul  lingers  by  the  body  and  offerings  are  placed 
in  the  grave.  The  Fiji  Islanders,  perhaps  Papuans,  believe 
that  the  soul  has  the  same  body  after  death.  It  passes  over 
a  "  path  of  shades,"  drinking  the  fount  of  forgetfulness,  a 
Lethe  which  causes  even  the  mourners  to  forget  their  grief. 
They  affectionately  strangle  their  parents  while  still  strong, 
lest  senile  decay  make  their  life  unpleasant  hereafter.  In 
New  Guinea  the  Papuans  make  an  image  for  the  dead  man's 
soul  to  live  in,  not  from  affection  but  to  keep  it  out  of 
mischief.1 

The  "  leaping  place  "  of  the  dead  is  where,  when  a  suffi- 
cient number  have  collected,  after  the  sun  goes  down,  the 
leap  to  heaven  is  made.  By  means  of  a  narrow  bridge  the 
souls  first  pass  the  river  Waioratane,  but  here  the  bridge- 
keeper  may  send  a  soul  back  (explanation  of  resuscitation). 
Then  they  individually  leap  up  and  so  become  stars  or  clouds. 
The  only  moral  content  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  brave  alone 
ever  get  as  far  as  the  bridge.  There  must  have  been  a  con- 
current belief  in  metempsychosis,  for  many  of  the  gods  are 
ancient  heroes  and  also  take  animal  forms.  But  such  a 
belief  is  now  held  very  vaguely.  Some  think  a  man's  spirit 
is  reborn  in  his  son.2 

The  burial  rite  was  elaborate,  for  it  required  eighteen 
Karakias  (spells)  and,  after  the  first  burial,  was  completed 
by  cleaning  and  painting  the  bones,  which  were  then  pre- 
served. The  head  was  often  embalmed.  There  was  no 
rite  for  marriage,  the  girl  becoming  taboo,  sacred,  for  her 
husband  at  the  wedding- feast,  without  any  spell,  probably 
because  she  was  usually  stolen.  Tribal  relations,  however, 

1  Basil  Thomas,  in  Journ.  Anthrop.  Inst.  1895,  p.  34pf.    In  regard 
to  the  chiefs,  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  the  priests  called  "  mouth-pieces 
of    Kongo,"    the   war-god,  were   distinct   from   the   military  chiefs 
and  might   neither  fight  nor  be   tattoed    (Tahiti,   tatu,   "  mark,"  a 
decorative  not  religious  sign,  according  to  Gill,  p.  95  and  Taylor, 

2  Taylor,  pp.  233,  299.     In  the  East  Indian  Archipelago,  the  good 
native  hopes  when  he  dies  to  become  a  crocodile. 


64  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

were  so  loose  among  the  Maoris  that  sometimes  the  groom 
renounced  his  tribe  and  lived  with  his  father-in-law,  fight- 
ing against  his  own  tribe  or  horde.  Death-dances  at 
funerals  resemble  those  in  Mexico,  but  do  not  prove  con- 
nexion.1 

The  Polynesian  priesthood  was  graded,  though  no  priest 
was  more  than  a  wizard.  Yet  Tohungas  were  lower  than 
Ariki,  who  were  high-priests  of  divine  power  defied  only 
by  the  strongest  chiefs.  But  even  a  woman-chief  has  been 
known  to  counter-taboo  a  tabooing  Ariki  and  overcome  him. 
Tahiti  had  a  graded  priest-corporation,  and  the  lower  grades, 
Areois,  were  strolling  players  who  acted  religious  scenes  in 
the  life  of  the  gods,  under  the  patronage  of  the  god  Oro, 
to  whom  were  given  the  first-fruits  of  harvest.  Songs  and 
dances  received  priestly  recognition  as  part  of  the  "  play." 
It  is  uncertain  whether  the  harvest-spirits  active  in  these 
performances  were  nature-spirits  or  ghosts. 

The  cult  is  conspicuous  for  cannibalistic  human  sacri- 
fice; it  is  offered  to  most  of  the  gods,  especially  to  Kongo. 
Remains  of  the  victims  were  distributed  to  chiefs  as  title 
of  land-ownership.  The  priest's  power  was  enormous  ;  who- 
ever interfered  with  his  prerogatives  was  afflicted  with 
hydrocele  or  other  diseases,  which,  however,  might  be  cured 
by  a  Karakia,  a  kind  of  incantation  used  to  avert  all  trou- 
bles and  bring  all  blessings,  for  the  individual  and  for  the 
state,  on  occasion  of  harvest,  hunting,  battle,  etc.  The 
Karakia  is  often  only  a  hymn  of  indefinite  thanks.  Thus 
for  hunting :  "  Give  thanks  above  and  below,  give  thanks 
to  the  Mother"  (goddess).  These  Karakia  were  counted 
by  stalks,  the  rosary-idea,  and  the  gods  entered  images  to 

1  Such  connexion  has  also  been  based  on  the  fact  that  a  South 
American  paddle  is  "  Melanesian "  in  appearance  or  that  lo  means 
a  spade  in  Mexico  and  in  New  Zealand.  More  important  are  the 
idols  and  temple-ruins  found  in  New  Zealand,  which  indicate 
either  foreign  influence  or  great  decadence.  According  to  Mr.  Best 
(Man,  1914),  New  Zealand  was  settled  about  900  years  ago  by 
eastern  Polynesians  who  combined  with  the  native  lower  type  of 
Fiji-like  savages.  The  Maori  could  have  learned  fortification -build- 
ing, building-sacrifice,  and  cannibalism  from  these  (Maruiwi). 


POLYNESIAN  SPIRITS  AND  CHARMS  65 

reply  to  them.  The  priest  played  the  Shaman,  as  medium 
between  men  and  gods.  With  writhing  body  and  rolling 
eye,  insensible  to  the  world,  he  spoke  the  oracle.1  Move- 
ments of  limbs,  birds,  and  dreams  were  also  oracular. 

Not  only  before  war  but  at  its  close  was  a  Karakia  nec- 
essary. Especially  to  lift  the  war-taboo  against  wives, 
which  was  entrusted  to  a  special  god,  Tu.  In  war  all  a 
man's  strength  is  required ;  hence  the  soft  delights  of  home 
were  formally  tabooed  by  Karakia,  till  it  was  over ;  then 
a  second  Karakia  lifted  it.  Another  parallel  to  foreign 
usage  is  that  of  the  scape-goat.  Over  one  man  was  sung 
a  Karakia,  which  bound  on  him  by  proxy  all  the  sins  of 
the  tribe,  which  he  carried  in  a  stalk  of  fern.  This  he  let 
float  down  the  river,  carrying  away  the  people's  sins.  An- 
other Karakia  is  pronounced  at  baptism,  when  a  child  is 
eight  days  old  and  a  name  is  given  him.  The  boy  is  sub- 
sequently "confirmed"  (Dr.  Taylor's  expression),  that  is, 
dedicated  before  battle  to  the  war-god  with  a  Karakia 
exhorting  him  to  be  virtuous  (brave).  With  a  girl  the 
name  is  given  under  this  formula :  "  Give  her  a  name ! 
What  is  this  little  girl?  She  is  a  living  breath,  the  breath 
of  a  great  chief  coming  from  heaven ;  for  lo !  the  sky  has 
breathed  forth"  (to  make  her  soul)  ;  an  interesting  coun- 
terpart to  the  Hebrew  idea  of  soul  as  the  breath  of  God. 
In  regard  to  the  name,  a  man  has  several.  One  is  given 
purely  for  personal  reasons.  For  example,  one  man  was 
called  Mawai  (cucumber)  because  he  could  creep  so  craftily 
upon  the  ground.  In  India  a  similar  name  meaning  gourd 
has  been  taken  to  prove  "  vegetable  totemism  "  ! 

To  sum  up  the  externals  of  Polynesian  religion,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  these  savages  worshipped  ghosts  as  ancestors, 
or  that  they  also  worshipped  natural  phenomena,  nor  much 
doubt  that  they  so  confused  the  two  classes  that  neither 
they  nor  we  in  many  instances  can  say  to  which  class  the 
object  worshipped  belongs.  Some  scholars  even  regard  all 
the  spirits  as  ghosts.  As  to  the  philosophic  pantheism 

1  Taylor,  op.  cit.,  p.  183. 


66  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

attributed  to  these  savages  by  Taylor  and  Gill,  it  is  partly 
due  to  the  idea  of  mana  and  partly  to  a  natural  read- 
ing-in  of  higher  ideas.  According  to  Taylor,  the  Maori 
believed  that  the  world  came  from  swelling,  which  made 
thought,  which  produced  memory,  desire,  spirit,  and  mat- 
ter. At  first  all  was  darkness  and  nought;  till  from  noth- 
ing came  swelling  (conception),  increase,  and  then  breath 
(spirit),  which  made  air,  atmosphere,  and  then  the  eyes 
of  heaven,  that  is,  sun  and  moon,  out  of  which  came  sky  and 
land  united,  till  Ra  (sun)  made  gods  and  men;  "and  Turi 
was  the  first  man  to  come  from  Hawaiki  "  (to  New  Zea- 
land). This  seems  to  be  a  double  account.  The  sixth  crea- 
tion is  formally  stated  to  be  gods  and  men,  as  if  the  original 
series  had  been  thought,  breath,  darkness-world,  light,  sky- 
earth,  gods-men,  but  at  best  it  is  a  philosophy  doubtless  more 
or  less  "  interpreted,"  though  it  remains  a  fair  parallel  to 
Rig  Veda  x.  129,  which  has  a  somewhat  similar  series. 
What  is  most  interesting,  however,  is  the  fact  that  here,  as 
often,  savages  explain  the  world  by  natural  evolution.  Our 
California  Indians  do  the  same. 

In  the  religious  thought  of  the  Polynesians,  death  is  an 
extreme  form  of  sickness.  The  line  is  drawn  not  between 
life  and  death  but  between  strength  and  weakness.  A  Fiji 
Islander  stands  in  a  tree-top  when  a  member  of  the  family 
has  died  and  calls  to  it,  "  Come  back,  come  back,"  as  if  it 
might  return.  Elsewhere  death  is  a  sleep.  To  kill  is  to 
"  put  to  sleep  " ;  an  extinguished  fire  "  sleeps."  1 

Totemism  of  a  peculiar  sort  is  found  in  Fiji,  where  a 
man's  father's  plants  and  animals  are  the  man's  totems,  of 

1  See  Dr.  W.  H.  R.  Rivers  in  the  Hibbert  Journal,  1912,  p.  393 ; 
and  A.  M.  Hocart  in  Man,  1915,  No.  5.  It  is  perhaps  questionable, 
however,  exactly  how  the  phenomena  here  should  be  interpreted. 
The  Chinese  also  call  "  come  back,"  and  putting  to  sleep  is  a  Hindu 
euphemism  for  killing.  The  general  belief  that  death  is  only 
extreme  weakness  is  an  illustration  of  a  common  savage  idea. 
Conversely,  old  men  are  called  "  ghosts "  by  some  Polynesians,  as 
having  already  become  pure  spirit.  Yet  only  as  lacking  strength, 
not  as  a  Buddhist  or  Yogi  becomes,  while  still  alive,  a  spiritual 
power. 


MANA  AND  TABOO  67 

which  he  may  thus  have  a  number.    This  is  evidently  a 
property-taboo  passing  into  a  form  of  totemism.1 

II.      MANA   AND   TABOO 

Maria  (both  vowels  are  short)  is  inherent  power,  some- 
times spiritual,  a  Polynesian  synonym  of  our  Indian  Wakan, 
Orenda,  etc.,  and  a  savage  equivalent  of  the  Hindu  Brahma 
(power).  Taboo  (Samoan  tapu,  Hawaiian  kapu)  is  a  tab 
or  mark  indicating  that  a  thing  is  not  noa  or  common,  but  set 
apart  for  private  use.  A  woman  is  noa  till  married,  then 
she  becomes  taboo  for  (sacred  to)  her  husband;  if  you 
steal  her,  you  break  taboo.  Taboo  connotes  Greek  ayos 
and  aytos,  Latin  sacer,  holy  or  accursed  because  awesome. 
Its  sign,  a  red  rag,  is  virtually  a  Noli  me  tangere. 

The  failure  to  distinguish  between  holy  and  devilish,  or 
accursed,  lingers  long.  In  Luke  xxi.  5,  the  temple  is 
adorned  with  anathemas,  only  a  vowel's  length  from 
anathemas,  both  indicating  something  "  set  up,"  as  de- 
voted, to  God  or  to  the  Devil,  holy  or  accursed.  The  Jews 
say  "the  Holy  Scriptures  defile  the  hands,"  render  them 
liable  to  cleansing  from  the  awesome  touch.  So  with  spirits. 
What  is  ghostly  is  ghastly. 

But  the  notion  of  taboo  is  so  general  and  the  word  itself 
so  thoroughly  anglicized  that  we  need  only  notice  some 
Polynesian  exaggerations  of  taboo  and  some  European  ex- 
aggeration of  the  taboo-theory.  Although  taboo  is  found 
everywhere,  it  is  systematically  over-stressed  in  Polynesia. 
Nowhere  else  is  man  so  taboo-ridden.  Here  it  can  be 
studied  with  greatest  ease.  Let  us  imagine  ourselves  think- 
ing a  la  Polynesia. 

All  things  have  power;  often  concealed.  Of  spirits  it  is 
unnecessary  to  speak ;  they  and  theirs  are  all  naturally  awe- 
some, sacred,  taboo.  Even  the  priests,  who  serve  spirits, 
are  so  filled  with  spiritual  power  that  they  may  not  be 
touched,  nor  their  food  tasted ;  they  must  wipe  their  hands 
on  their  own  hair  or  on  their  own  dogs.  Not  so  much  lest 

1  See  A.  M.  Hocart  in  Man,  1915,  No.  3. 


68  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

they  injure  others,  but  lest  their  power  be  captured  by 
others,  who  might  use  it  against  them.  Whoever  shows 
great  strength  has  inward  power,  mana.  Whoever  pos- 
sesses power  naturally  rules ;  his  mana  is  extremely  danger- 
ous. Whatever  is  riot  understood  is  dangerous.  Many 
animals  are  dangerous ;  all  mysterious  things  are  dangerous, 
especially  the  mysteries  of  life  and  death  and  the  spiritual 
world.  It  is  best  not  to  meddle  with  them,  but  to  taboo 
them.  So  thinks  the  savage.  That  mana  is  often  virility- 
power  is  probable;  its  complement  is  the  female  power. 
The  best  defence  against  magic  is  a  drastic  gesture  imply- 
ing that  one  casts  his  virility  against  the  magician.1 

But  there  is  no  universal  system  of  taboo,  no  one  way  of 
thinking  about  it.  Scholars  who  have  gone  on  the  theory 
that  there  is  a  world-wide  taboo-system  have  gone  wrong. 
They  cannot  understand  how  savages  in  one  part  of  the 
world  can  contradict  their  system.  Why  should  one  savage 
wash  and  one  refrain  from  washing  after  a  burial?  Why 
should  one  savage  allow  a  girl  who  has  reached  adult  age 
to  mingle  freely  with  people  and  another  shut  her  up  ?  They 
suggest  absurd  theories  to  account  for  such  discrepancies. 
The  simple  truth  is  that  the  same  situation  strikes  one  sav- 
age in  one  way  and  another  in  another  way.  The  girl,  for 
example,  has  a  sudden  access  of  "  power  " ;  she  may  be  dan- 
gerous, and  is  confined,  so  some  Polynesians  think.  Other 
savages,  like  the  African  Warundi,  argue  that  her  power 
adds  to  the  family  or  tribal  power  and  should  be  spread 
abroad,  and  she  is  led  about  to  "  bless  "  the  community. 

A  second  common  error  is  the  one  already  exposed.  It  is 
that  mana  is  an  universal,  almost  pantheistic,  spiritual  power, 
of  which  every  individual  has  a  share.  No  unaided  savage 
ever  generalized  thus.  Each  individual  has  a  power,  not  a 
share  of  a  world-power.  There  is  a  tree,  a  rock,  a  man,  each 
with  power,  not  a  general  tree-power,  etc. ;  still  less  a  general 
tree-rock-man-god  power. 

1  See  Man,  1914,  No.  66,  and  compare  the  oath  by  the  thigh  in 
Hebrew  law. 


MANA  AND  TABOO  69 

A  third  error  is  that  all  taboos  are  religious.  But  wher- 
ever priests  and  kings  are,  there  religious  motives  are  apt 
to  become  political.  So  it  is  with  taboo.  Originally  a  har- 
vest is  tabooed  till  the  first  fruits  are  religiously  gathered. 
The  taboo  thus  becomes  a  sign  to  prevent  permature  har- 
vesting. But,  at  the  same  time,  the  sign  of  taboo  itself,  a 
red  rag  or  something  of  the  sort,  is  utilized  to  scare  rob- 
bers. The  private  individual  acts  on  this  discovery  and 
how  much  more  the  priest  and  the  king?  They  taboo,  for 
their  own  convenience  and  for  wealth,  whatever  they  wish 
to  keep  to  themselves.  So  in  the  taboo-system  we  must 
recognize  that  same  intermixture  of  religion  and  cunning 
which  has  exalted  other  priests  and  kings.  The  augur 
winks  at  his  fellow  in  Polynesia  as  well  as  in  Rome.1 

A  fourth  error  is  that  taboo  always  implies  the  fear  of  a 
spirit.  Waitz,  Schultze,  and  other  writers  of  the  last  cen- 
tury have  made  this  error  and  Wundt  still  acts  upon  it,  to 
the  great  detriment  of  his  work.2  In  its  most  primitive 
manifestations  taboo  is  either  spiritual,  atua  tabu,  or  non- 
spiritual,  mana  tabu.  In  New  Zealand  these  two  classes 
are  formally  recognized.  The  spirit  or  god  has  a  power 
tabooed;  or  a  man,  garden,  tree,  river,  has  each  in  itself  a 
power  against  which  one  must  guard.  In  Mikronesia,  where 
primitive  taboo  has  been  developed  far  beyond  its  original 
simplicity,  taboo  is  generally  one  against  spirits. 

The  aim  of  religious  purity  to  a  savage  is  to  keep  his 
own  power  or  spirit,  either  by  guarding  against  its  loss  or 
its  weakness,  caused  by  adverse  influences.  Food-taboos 

1  The  exaggeration  of  this  truth  leads  to  the  error  of  Taylor, 
Te  Ika  a  Mani,  that  all  taboo  is  due  to  priestly  craft. 

2  Wundt,  deriving  taboo  from  totemism,  explains  all  morality  as 
due  to  a  fear  of  the  ancestral  ghost  (in  vermin  as  well  as  in  ani- 
mals).   His    work    is    a    good    example    of    taboo    extravagance. 
Wundt  teaches   for  example,  that  the  reason  civilized  man  avoids 
reptiles  and  vermin  is  that  he  has  an  inherited  dread   of  his  an- 
cestral ghost  (located  in  the  vermin).     Compare  Wundt,  Volkerpsy- 
chologie,    Mythus    und    Religion,    Leipzig,     1906,    ii.    308.    Other 
modern  writers  occasionally  err  in  making  mana  always  a  spirit- 
power  (so  in  Man,  1916,  No.  46). 


70  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

are  very  minute  for  this  reason,  but  it  is  not  only  an  atua, 
which  might  slip  in  and  injure,  that  one  guards  against. 
There  is  also  danger  in  the  food-power,  the  same  power  that 
inheres  in  nails,  hair,  blood,  etc.  Mana  is  as  contagious  as 
small-pox  and  to  be  guarded  against  in  the  same  way. 
Pure  taboo  is  quite  limited;  most  of  the  cases  cited  are 
really  secondary,  like  using  a  rag  solely  to  establish  owner- 
ship. In  pure  taboo  it  is  usually  a  question  of  life  and 
death.  Thus  blood  is  life  and  ground  where  blood  is  shed 
is  taboo.  Food  is  life ;  hence  a  harvest-taboo.  But  when 
a  chief  taboos  his  people  with  the  sole  object  of  making 
the  lazy  fellows  work,  that  is  secondary.  Wine  was  taboo 
in  Egypt  because  it  was  blood-like.  But  the  African  yam- 
taboo,  like  that  of  some  animals  in  Australia,  is  purely  hy- 
gienic and  secondary.  Indigestion  may  be  a  devil,  but  when 
the  old  Australian  may  not  eat  pork  and  his  son,  of  middle 
age,  may  eat,  it  is  because  one  cannot,  and  one  can,  digest 
it.1  But  in  taboos  of  blood,  birth,  and  death  there  is  a  real 
if  vague  dread  of  a  mysterious  potency. 

Many  simple  taboos  are  due  to  the  twisted  logic  of  the 
savage  mind.  A  knot  is  difficult.  Hence  knots  and  things 
like  knots,  crossed  legs  or  arms,  are  capable  of  restrictive 
influence.  Therefore  there  is  a  taboo  on  all  such  things 
when  there  is  labour  or  an  illness  especially  dangerous.  Ill- 
ness is  itself  a  knot  and  in  Scotland  one  prays  to  the  Devil  to 
loosen  the  knots  of  sickness,  just  as  in  India  one  prays  to 
Varuna  to  "  loosen  the  knots."  But  a  knot  is  not  neces- 
sarily evil,  since  restriction,  of  excessive  rain-fall,  etc.,  may 
be  useful.  Such  a  knot-taboo  is  more  logical  than  religious ; 
its  interpretation  is  rather  magical  than  spiritual.  Name- 
taboos  involve  the  person;  whose  name  is  part  of  himself. 
Hence  innumerable  taboos,  either  to  prevent  a  person  from 
controlling  another  whose  name  is  used,  or  to  prevent  a 
person  from  appearing.  In  South  India,  a  wife  will  not 

1  In  higher  religions,  if  the  pig  is  associated  with  the  underworld, 
it  becomes  taboo  from  a  new  association  of  ideas,  with  under-world 
potencies. 


MANA  AND  TABOO  71 

name  her  husband  ;  most  Hindus  today  will  not  divulge  their 
real  names.  In  Africa  this  is  called  the  hlonipa,  "  taboo  of 
naming  oneself."  In  Australia  there  is  a  secret  name,  for 
safety.  To  prevent  sudden  appearance,  tigers  are  not  called 
tigers  in  India,  and  the  Devil  is  called  Old  Nick  in  Scotland. 
This  is  not  religious  in  itself  ;  but  it  may  easily  have  a  re- 
ligious application.  Thus  in  Polynesia  the  common  people 
were  not  permitted  to  know  the  real  name  of  the  great 
Maori  god  lo  (compare  the  Hebrew  parallel),  for  the  same 
reason  that  forbids  an  African  to  name  his  king.  It  is  prac- 
tically equivalent  to  boasting  that  one  controls  him.  In 
Australia  the  dead  are  not  named,  "  Lest  they  hear  them- 
selves called  and  return,"  or,  as  our  Indians  more  courte- 
ously say,  "  No  one  would  stop  them  on  their  heavenward 
way."  From  name-taboo  many  common  words  used  as 
names  may  become  taboo,  without  any  other  religious 
reason.1 

Marriage  taboos  are  manifold  but  not  all  are  religious. 
Brother  and  sister  must  marry,  in  Egypt  and  Peru,  for  eco- 
nomic reasons  ;  endogamy  often  precedes  exogamy  and 
marriages  are  arranged  which,  to  us,  seem  incestuous  ;  or  are 
prohibited  which  to  us  are  allowable.2  Food-taboos,  too,  are 
often  due  merely  to  food-vows.3  A  kingly  taboo  cannot  be 
established  merely  because  of  Homer's  Itpov  /xeW,  for  fepos, 
before  meaning  "  divine,"  meant  strong,  in  itself  a  good  ex- 
ample of  how  power  is  interpreted  as  holy.  Dr.  Frazer  mis- 
takenly concludes  that  sentinels  were  "  sacred,"  because  this 
is  applied  to  them. 


1  But  it  does  not  follow  that  linguistic  gaps  prove  taboo.    Meringer 
thus  thinks  to  "  prove  "  taboo,  and  hence  totemism,  for  the  Indo- 
Europeans,  because  they  have  in  part  lost  the  word  for  bear;  Ind. 
Forsch.  xxi.  2Oj6f. 

2  For  Frazer's  theory  that  incest  is   thought  to   disturb  nature 
(a  doubtful  conclusion),  see  his  Psyche's  Task   (2  ed.   1913). 

3  Or  to  other  secondary  taboo  reasons.    Thus  the  Navajo  fish- 
taboo  is  due  to  the  belief  that  the  Navajo  is  descended  from  a  fish, 
not  to  an  original  fish-taboo.     The  Bengal  fish-taboo  comes  from 
a  local  rain-god  who  was  once  a  Mohammedan  saint!     The  Eskimo 
fish-taboo  is  purely  economic. 


72  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Many  guesses  have  been  converted  into  positive  assertions 
in  the  domain  of  ancient  religions.  How  much  real  taboo 
there  was  in  Nazarite  and  Essene  religion  it  is  now  impos- 
sible to  know.  But  there  is  more  than  enough  guess-work 
in  regard  to  modern  religions.  Thus  we  are  told  that  the 
dirty  savage  would  never  wash  himself  but  for  taboo,  that  a 
new-born  baby  is  washed  for  taboo,  that  care  for  the  dead 
is  all  taboo-work.  But  many  savages  in  hot  climes  bathe 
for  pleasure ;  so  do  animals,  as  they  clean  themselves.  The 
Sankrit  word  for  cat  means  a  cleanser,  and  even  a  cow  licks 
clean  its  baby;  while  decaying  bodies  are  repulsive,  and  in 
warm  climates  the  third  day  after  death  makes  a  corpse  an 
object  to  be  got  rid  of,  taboo  or  no  taboo.1  The  savage 
must  be  given  credit  for  some  sense,  if  not  for  decency ;  also 
for  some  human  nature.  Scholars  who  ascribe  to  taboo  all 
caste-systems,  self-adornment,  and  even  umbrellas,  should 
study  man  and  history.  Castes  come  from  dividing  politi- 
cal entities  and  from  different  occupations.  In  both  cases 
taboo  arises  after,  not  before,  the  caste.  Every  savage  and 
even  some  animals  affect  shiny  things.  No  savage  but 
loves  a  silk  hat.  Umbrellas  in  India  were  not  carried  till 
late  in  the  historical  period  and  then  for  the  purpose  of  pro- 
tecting a  king  from  the  sun.  Anthropologists  find  savages 
whose  priests  flatter  their  king  by  saying  he  carries  an  um- 
brella to  protect  the  sun  from  His  Majesty,  and  the 
anthropologist,  who  is  often  as  guiltless  of  history  as  the 
savage,  believes  this. 

As  a  matter  of  form  some  taboos  are  temporary,  some 
permanent,  as  well  as  primary  and  secondary.  Temporary 
taboo  may  be  a  mere  matter  of  precaution.  If  a  stranger 
arrives,  he  is  temporarily  tabooed  till  the  visited  tribe  see  if 
he  be  spiritually  dangerous,  a  temporary  quarantine  against 
unknown  mana.  Of  this  sort  are  public  taboos  set  on  a 
river  or  wood  for  special  reasons  for  a  limited  time  and  then 
removed  by  Karakia.  Permanent  taboo  is  that,  for  exam- 

1  This  is  the  usual  time-limit.  Forty  days  may  elapse  in  a  cold 
climate,  as  with  the  Scythians. 


MANA  AND  TABOO  73 

pie,  of  a  priest  or  a  king's  house.  Many  taboos  arise  from 
conservatism  and  the  principle  that  what  is  custom  is  holy. 
Taboos  surrounding  old  Irish  kings  are  simply  ancient  cus- 
toms sacro-sanct  because  of  immemorable  antiquity,  not 
because  they  reflect  original  taboo.  It  is  taboo  to  break 
the  custom;  but  that  is  another  matter.  The  Hindu  king 
was  told  by  law  when  to  go  to  bed ;  but  being  an  Aryan  he 
never  obeyed  the  rule  enough  to  have  a  taboo  created.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  Egyptian  king  so  regularly  went  to  bed 
when  he  was  told  that  his  twenty-fifth  descendant  regarded 
it  as  a  divine  law  and  had  a  bed-hour  taboo  which  he  feared 
to  break. 

More  important  are  moral  origins  reverting  to  taboo. 
The  taboo  becomes  a  categorical  imperative.  Theft  as 
breaking  taboo  becomes  legally  sinful.  Yet  here  also  the 
anthropologist  has  exaggerated.  He  professes  to  derive  all 
moral  laws  from  taboo.  Adultery,  murder,  theft  are  not 
(he  says)  sins  per  se;  they  are  sinful  only  as  violations  of 
taboo.  But  does  a  dog  recognize  taboo?  Does  he  not 
punish  the  dog  that  steals  his  bone?  Is  not  murder,  the 
slaying  of  a  member  of  the  group,  avenged  from  self-pro- 
tection or  sentiment  (the  tigress  slays  the  murderer  of  her 
young)  more  than  from  taboo?  Does  only  a  taboo-fearer 
kill  the  man  who  takes  his  wife?  Such  taboos,  against 
theft,  murder,  and  adultery,  exist,  but  because  the  act  is  an 
injury,  that  is,  a  wrong.1 

Dread  and  dislike  begin  in  the  lowest  organisms.  When 
such  an  organism  in  the  biological  laboratory  shifts  its  po- 
sition from  blue  light  to  red,  the  foundation  for  taboo  is 
laid.  Higher  up,  man  shifts  from  what  he  dislikes  or  fears, 
blood  or  death,  imagining  in  it  some  mysterious  potency. 
Then  he  begins  to  create  spirit  in  things  and  avoids  those 

1 A  missionary  once  asked  a  savage  to  explain  '  wrong/  He 
explained:  "When  another  man  steals  my  wife."  "Excellent," 
said  the  missionary,  "and  now  explain  *  right.'"  He  explained: 
"  When  I  steal  another  man's  wife."  Morality's  basis  is  personal 
advantage;  only  a  wider  outlook  can  widen  the  concepts  right 
and  wrong. 


74  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

he  dislikes,  namely  the  unknown  or  uncanny.  Even  before 
the  organism  invents  the  idea  of  spirit,  it  shies  at  the  un- 
known, as  a  horse  shies  at  loose  paper,  instinctively  avoid- 
ing all  ill,  which  later  becomes  evil.  Battle-blood  alarms  no 
savage;  but  blood  appearing  in  consequence  of  processes 
not  understood  calls  for  taboo,  which  at  bottom  is  an  ex- 
pression of  dislike  (often  merely  because  unlike  leads  to 
dislike)  or  of  fear.  It  may  or  may  not  be  religious. 
Medhatithi,  an  old  Hindu  commentator  on  divine  law,  shows 
his  sanity  when,  in  explaining  taboos  against  going  to  bed 
with  wet  feet  and  swimming  a  river,  he  remarks,  "  not  of 
religious  moment."  That  is,  taboo  is  practical  and  may  be 
religious.  Taboo  did  not  originate  ethics,  as  Dr.  Jevons  has 
tried  to  persuade  us,  but  it  has  legalized  and  strengthened 
morality.  It  has  done  this,  as  man  has  risen  from  fear  of 
a  mysterious  power  to  fear  of  a  more  defined  spirit-power, 
by  eventually  putting  the  fear  of  God  into  the  sinner. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Richard  Taylor,  Te  Ika  a  Maui  (New  Zealand,  Maori,  etc.), 
London,  1870. 

William  W.  Gill,  Myths  and  Songs  from  the  South  Pacific,  Lon- 
don, 1876. 

Theodore  Waitz  (-Gerland),  Anthropologie  der  Naturvdlker, 
Part  iii,  Leipzig,  1872. 

Edward  Shortland,  Maori  Religion  and  Mythology,  London, 
1882. 

William  Ellis,  Polynesian  Researches  (Society  and  Sandwich 
Islands),  2d  ed.,  London,  1831-32. 

F.  B.  Jevons,  An  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion,  ad  ed., 
London,  1902;  An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Compara- 
tive Religion,  New  York,  1908. 


CHAPTER  SIX 

RELIGIONS   OF   NORTH   AMERICA 

THE   ESKIMOS.      CENTRAL  TRIBES.      CULT-HEROES. 
TOTEMISM.      RITUAL   OF   SOUTHERN   TRIBES 

IN  America  the  highest  culture  was  attained  midway  be- 
tween North  and  South ;  in  the  North  the  closest  approach 
to  civilization  was  made  by  the  much-encircled  Iroquois, 
who  had  an  especial  aptitude  for  political  and  ethical  de- 
velopment, resulting  in  the  Confederacy  of  Nations  and  a 
superior  moral  code.  The  mental  friction  produced  by  all- 
round  antagonism  often  seems  to  engender  intellectual  fire, 
of  which  a  clearer  religion  is  a  manifestation.1  The  mis- 
sionaries asserted  that  theft  and  lying  were  practically  un- 
known vices  among  the  Iroquois.  Their  political  supe- 
riority is  unquestioned.  If  they  had  not  been  interfered 
with  by  Europeans  they  would  probably  have  established 
an  Aztec-like  hegemony  over  Eastern  America.  Conversely, 
the  outlying  parts  of  the  country,  represented  by  Eskimos 
and  Athapascans  or,  in  South  America,  by  Fuegians  and 
Patagonians,  present  the  lowest  extreme  of  intellectual 
and  religious  savagery.  There  seems  to  be  no  racial  differ- 
ence to  account  for  this,  as  the  whole  country  since  the 
Stone  Age  has  been  occupied  by  intermingled  long-heads 
and  round-heads.  Some  have  fancied  that  aboriginal  tribes 
used  Atlantic  stepping-stones  and  came  from  Europe.  More 
probable  is  the  theory  that  the  country  was  settled  from 
Asia  by  the  North  West  passage.  But  wherever  the  peo- 
ple came  from,  there  is  no  certainty  as  to  the  provenance 

1  Compare  the  intellectual  superiority  of  mid-placed  groups,  such 
as  those  of  Athens  and  Saxony,  in  their  respective  periods. 

75 


76  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

of  their  religions.  We  must  accept  them  as  American  till 
stronger  evidence  for  foreign  extraction  has  been  shown 
than  the  landing  of  a  Japanese  junk  in  Mexico  (in  1845), 
the  resemblance  of  totem-poles  to  Malay  idols,  and  the 
similarity  between  Peruvian  and  Egyptian  monuments  and 
heliolatry.  Parallels  are  always  pleasing  but  they  often 
delude. 

To  begin  with  the  outer  circle.  The  Eskimos  appear  to 
have  reached  Greenland  as  emigrants  from  Alaska  by  the 
way  of  Hudson's  Bay,  or,  as  some  think,  they  came  from  the 
latter  locality.  These  lowest  Americans,  allied  to  the  Aleuts, 
are  about  on  the  religious  level  of  the  Fuegians,  somewhat 
higher  than  the  Andamanese  and  Australians,  somewhat 
lower  than  the  Siberian  Shamanists.  They  have  no  idols, 
no  God,  and  no  theory  of  creation;  only  the  Greenlanders 
say  that  woman  was  created  from  man's  thumb.  There  is 
no  real  worship  of  sun,  moon,  stars,  or  any  animal.  Ban- 
croft, speaking  of  the  Westerners,  says,  "  Their  whole  re- 
ligion may  be  summed  up  as  a  vague  fear,  finding  its  ex- 
pression in  witchcraft."  1  Our  name  for  the  Eskimos  means 
omophagous,  an  Algonkin  epithet;  they  call  themselves  In- 
nuit,  the  "people"  (compare  Ainu,  etc.).  Brinton  thinks 
they  were  the  omophagous  people  who  lived  about  1300  in 
what  is  now  Rhode  Island  and  Virginia. 

Witchcraft  is  at  least  characteristic  of  the  Eskimos. 
Their  witch-doctor,  Angakok  (Tungak)  chiefly  detected 
wrong-doers;  but  he  was  not  respected  nor  feared  like  his 
African  brother;  nor  was  he  a  religious  agent  of  the  people. 
He  acquired  power  by  the  help  of  animals  seen  in  dreams  or 
of  spirits,  but  he  could  not  control  vital  forces.  In  Green- 
land, women  also  acted  as  Shamans,  but  in  general  these 
proto-priests  were  men.  Evil  spirits  expelled  at  the  end  of 
winter  are  the  objects  of  their  special  regard.  Women  go 
from  house  to  house  and  stab  these  demons  (Tuna),  as 
Greeks  routed  demons.  The  spirits  escape  through  a  hole 

1  Bancroft,  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  States,  San  Francisco, 
1882,  iii.  151. 


RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  77 

and  are  then  corralled  near  a  fire,  around  which  sit  men, 
who  hear  the  charges  against  them  and  shoot  them  into  the 
fire.  The  men  then  brush  the  infection  off  and  rest  easy 
till  next  year.  Spirits  are  audible  when  ice-floes  crack 
(noise-spirits),  a  crude  form  of  phenomenal  gods. 

But  ghosts  also  disturb  the  Eskimos.  They  seek  to  enter 
warm  houses  when  winter  begins,  as  in  Teutonic  myth,  and 
he  whom  they  catch  dies.  Human  ghosts  chase  men ;  canine 
ghosts  chase  dogs.  They  bring  all  sorts  of  ills.  There  are 
also  rock-spirits,  hill-spirits,  etc.  A  sort  of  animal-mythol- 
ogy has  grown  up  in  some  parts  of  the  North  and  the  Cen- 
tral Eskimos  have  a  Sedna,  a  spirit  of  ocean  who  controls 
seals,  etc.,  which  are  her  amputated  fingers.  Some  Northern 
Eskimos  believe  in  Tornassuk,  a  spirit  who  rules  all  spirits. 
Sedna  is  a  sort  of  goddess.  She  supplies  seals  and,  if  they 
do  not  come,  the  wizard  must  find  out  who  has  offended  her. 
She  rises  from  the  ground  and  is  thought  of  as  mistress  of 
Adlivan,  the  underworld.  To  her  and  to  her  father  go  the 
dead.  Yet,  like  any  other  demon,  she  is  expelled  when  she 
comes  from  her  place  below;  a  festival  celebrates  her  re^- 
treat.  But,  as  she  is  liable  to  rise  again  at  any  time,  the 
Eskimos  wear  amulets  to  protect  themselves  from  her.  All 
spirits  are  propitiated  by  gifts  of  food  and  clothes.  This  is 
the  only  sacrifice,  except  that  an  atonement,  introduced  by  a 
confession,  is  made  to  Sedna,  when  a  no-work  taboo  has 
been  violated.  She  is  thus  far  a  moral  spirit. 

The  brave  go  to  a  happy  world  and  so  do  unfortunate 
women  —  a  reward  of  valour  and  a  compensation.  Reli- 
gious motives  and  beginnings  are  thus  not  unknown;  but 
magic  predominates,  while  sympathetic  magic  is  important. 
Ducks  and  ptarmigans,  represented  by  youths  born  in  sum- 
mer and  winter,  respectively,  have  a  tug  of  war  and  the 
victory  decides  the  coming  season,  whether  mild  or  severe. 

Labrador  Eskimos  recognize  the  great  evil  Death  as  a 
spirit.  Each  individual,  man  or  animal,  has  an  owner- 
spirit  and  a  ghost-spirit,  which,  when  Death  seizes  him, 
enters  another  body;  but  also  a  third  spirit  which  may  go 


7$  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

to  another  world  or  be  annihilated.  Each  body-part  has  its 
own  "  soul."  There  are  no  really  ethical  spirits ;  they  are  all 
bad  or  liable  to  become  bad  (hurtful)  when  off  ended.  The 
souls  of  the  brave,  dancing  as  northern  lights,  are  seen  in 
the  sky,  where  the  moon  hunts,  but  is  not  worshipped. 
Some  Eskimos  ascribe  rain  to  urine  from  a  "  sky- woman." 
But  there  is  no  uniformity  in  belief  or  reports,  since  some 
are  said  to  regard  the  sky  as  a  cold  place  and  the  underworld 
as  warm  and  comfortable,  more  desirable  than  the  sky  as  a 
future  residence.  In  the  East,  guardian  spirits  give  the 
wizards  power  to  mediate  between  men  and  spirits  (a  faint 
approach  to  Shamanism).  The  dead  are  buried  anywhere; 
disregard  of  dress  and  hair  and  ceremonial  idleness  are  the 
mourning-rites.  Song  is  common  but  not  religious.  Dan- 
ish, Moravian,  and  Russian  missionaries  have  destroyed  or 
modified  primitive  belief  among  the  Eskimos  of  Greenland, 
Labrador,  and  Alaska.  The  beliefs  explained  above,  unless 
otherwise  specified,  are  those  of  a  more  general  character. 
Totemism  has  been  found  among  them  in  a  restricted  area. 
The  primitive  animism  and  undeveloped  Shamanism  of 
these  Eskimos  are  the  underlying  religious  characteristics 
of  most  of  the  North  American  tribes.  In  the  West,  the 
Athapascan  tribes  have  a  crude  belief  in  evil  spirits ;  south- 
ward they  borrowed  a  higher  culture.  These  tribes,  notably 
the  Navajo  and  the  allied,  not  parent,  stem  of  Apaches,  set- 
tled in  New  Mexico  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  in  the 
seventeenth  over-ran  the  Pueblos,  from  whom  they  took 
some  cultural  elements.  Other  northern  tribes  believe  in 
sacred  animals.  Thus  from  the  Columbia  Thlinkits  the  cult 
of  the  Raven  as  master  of  life  (or  creator)  has  spread  to 
the  Plains.  The  Pueblos,  Zunis,  and  Hopi,  related  to  Cliff- 
dwellers  and  Mound-builders,  belong  to  the  Shoshoneans, 
as  do  the  Diggers  and  Comanches,  and  are  connected  through 
the  western  tribes  with  the  Nahuans-Aztecs,  with  whom 
they  have  in  common  an  advanced  zoolatry  and  nature- 
worship.  An  inner  zone  is  made  by  the  Siouan  tribes 
(southern  Atlantic  states  to  the  Mississippi,  Crows  and  Da- 


RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  79 

kotas),  broken  into  by  the  Apalachians  or  Muskhogean 
Creeks,  Seminoles,  and  Chocktaws  of  the  South  and  by  the 
Louisiana  Natchez.  Within  this  zone  again,  all  was  Algon- 
kin  from  beyond  the  Canadian  line  to  Tennessee  and  from 
Montana  to  Maine,  except  as  the  Algonkins  themselves  en- 
closed the  Iroquois,  whose  earliest  settlements  extended 
along  the  basin  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  Algonkins  in- 
cluded the  northern  Chippeways  (not  Athapascan),  the 
western  Cheyenne  and  Blackfeet,  the  Sacs,  Foxes,  Dela- 
ware Leni  Lenape,  and  Shawnee,  besides  New  England 
tribes,  and  are  represented  in  history  by  Black  Hawk,  Poco- 
hontas  (Powhatan),  and  King  Philip.  The  Iroquois  in- 
cluded the  southern  Cherokees,  western  Hurons,  Susque- 
hannocks,  and  lesser  tribes  besides  the  Five  Nations  *  of  the 
Confederacy,  the  Mohawks,  Oneidas,  Cayugas,  Onondagas, 
and  Senecas.  They  occupied  New  York,  Pennsylvania, 
Georgia,  Tennessee,  Kentucky,  and  shared  with  the  Siouans 
the  Carolinas  and  Virginia. 

The  ruder  savages,  both  North  and  South,  have  in  com- 
mon a  vague  conception  of  souls,  a  belief  in  ghosts  and  in 
animal-spirits  and  in  the  same  nature-spirits  recognized  by 
the  Greenlanders.  Gods  of  higher  phenomena  are  generally 
lacking  in  the  outer  circle,  or  are  borrowed,  but  demons  of 
wind,  rain,  and  sea,  for  example,  are  recognized  by  the 
Caribs,  and  in  Cuba  the  Tainos  even  had  a  sun-cult.  The 
Floridas  and  Iroquois  also  revered  the  sun.  The  Siouan 
tribes,  within  the  savage  zone  of  Apaches  and  Comanches, 
have  a  primitive  fire-cult,  religious  ritual,  and  perhaps  phal- 
licism ; 2  while  the  still  more  advanced  Algonkins  have  an 
elaborate  culture-myth,  and  prayers  for  mercy  and  for  for- 
giveness. Reasoning  and  talking  beasts,  lycanthropy,  an- 
thropopathic  vegetables,  rocks,  and  rivers,  belong  in  common 
to  all  the  Northern  tribes,  the  higher  culture  retaining  the 

1  Afterwards  six,  as  the  Tuscaroras  of  Carolina  joined  the  Con- 
federacy   in    1712-15.    The    Wyandots    (Huron-Fries)    were    first 
opposed  and  then  subject  to  the  Iroquois  or  "  Iroquoians." 

2  The  medicine-bags  contained  phallic  material ;  but  the  phallus 
is  not  the  object  of  a  special  cult. 


80  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

lower.  Tutelary  spirits  as  protecting  gods  were  recognized 
by  the  higher  tribes,  not  as  always  kind  but  as  amiably  dis- 
posed if  not  thwarted,  to  whom  thanksgiving  was  made.1 
But  there  was  no  fixed  pantheon. 

The  Caribs,  from  whose  name  comes  the  word  cannibal, 
were  only  one  of  many  bands  of  American  cannibals.  Can- 
nibalism here,  however,  was  not  religious.  Like  the  sav- 
ages of  the  Amazon  and  of  Fuego,  the  lowest  races  ate  their 
friends  and  foes  as  an  incidental  food.  In  Darien  men 
even  ate  their  wives  and  children,  and  bred  children  to  be 
eaten.  There  is  here  no  "  religious  "  thought  of  preserving 
individual  or  tribal  strength;  human  beings  were  eaten  as 
animals  would  be  eaten.  In  the  North,  however,  sacrifices 
were  made  of  human  victims,  and  after  a  war  foes  were 
eaten  by  the  Iroquois  and  Algonkins,  not  merely  as  a  food- 
supply,  but  from  a  magical  motive,  with  a  distinct  idea  of 
absorbing  power.  Thus  the  Pottawottomies,  as  late  as  1812, 
cut  up  and  distributed  an  Englishman  to  be  eaten  by  the 
tribes  as  a  magical  sustenance.  At  the  same  time  it  is  clear 
that  even  the  Iroquois  were  on  occasion  mere  irreligious  can- 
nibals. The  name  Mohawk  implies  as  much. 

Idolatry  appears  at  its  highest  in  the  huge  idols  of  the 
Aztecs  (below)  ;  but  it  is  not  unknown  among  the  Amazons, 
and  in  the  Antilles  there  were  grotesque  but  real  parallels 
to  the  ancestral  figures  or  tablets  of  the  Chinese.  Some  of 
the  northern  tribes  have  a  cult  of  tree-trunks  resembling  a 
man  standing  upright,  a  sort  of  xoonon.2  Totem-poles  also 
are  eidola  of  supposed  ancestors.  Some  of  the  Plains  In- 
dians had  "  dolls  "  (idols)  and  painted  the  evil  spirit  on  one 
side  of  the  wigwam  and  the  good  spirit  on  the  other,  to  be 
safe  on  all  sides. 

Totemism  in  America  is  of  secondary  character  and  offers 
no  solution  of  the  problem  of  its  origin.  This  perhaps  lies 

1  Francis  Parkman,  The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  Boston,  1879,  p. 
315.     In  expressing  thanks  there  is  a   (pluti)    prolongation  of  the 
cry,  with  resolved  first  vowel. 

2  Compare    Reville,    Religions    des   peuples   non    civilises,    Paris, 
1883,  and  Catlin's  North  American  Indian,  London,  1845. 


RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  8 1 

in  the  animal  as  food-supply,  hence  regarded  as  parent  and 
a  divinity ;  at  first  eaten,  then  sanctified.1  The  word  is  said 
to  mean  "  token."  Properly  it  indicates  a  relationship  be- 
tween a  human  and  an  animal  group.  The  individual  ani- 
mal is  the  helpful  brother  of  the  man  and  is  of  superhuman 
ability,  often  regarded  as  from  the  same  ancestor,  who  is 
revered,  but  hardly  as  a  god.  Yet  the  animal  may  be 
revered  without  being  a  totem  and  the  totem  may  be  a  mere 
badge.  Magic  ceremonies  for  procuring  food  among  the 
Plains  Indians  are  not  totemistic.  The  great  Iroquois  and 
Algonkin  tribes  show  no  sure  examples  of  totemism.  The 
Algonkin  Foxes  had  seven  totems,  but  did  not  descend  from 
any  of  them.  The  Cherokee  killed  his  totem  freely,  though 
with  a  show  of  ceremony.  The  Pottawottomies  ate  their 
totem.  Domestication  of  animals  (the  dog  and  bison)  did 
not  result  in  totemism.  Among  the  Navajo  and  Apache 
tribes  there  are  only  faint  traces  of  the  practice.  In  gen- 
eral, in  better  organized  communities  and  where  food  was 
easily  obtained,  there  is  less  trace  of  totemism.  What  takes 
its  place  in  the  North  West  and  among  the  Siouan  tribes 
is  the  animal  as  a  personal  guardian.  A  young  man  selects 
an  animal,  guided  to  his  selection  by  fasting  and  prayer,  and 
after  killing  it  regards  the  species  as  a  totemic  animal. 
But  there  is  no  natural  relationship.  So  the  Yukon  Eskimo 
boy  has  a  private  guardian  spirit-beast,  as  the  Peruvian  has 
a  "  brother"  beast-image.  The  Siouan  religious  societies 
bear  animal  names,  but  their  Dakotas  and  Omahas  show 
only  a  possible  survival  of  real  totemism  in  tracing  descent 
from  certain  animals.  Vegetable  totems  occur  in  the  Mid- 
dle West  and  East,  but  they  are  not  "  relatives  "  of  the 
clans.  About  the  only  tribes  having  a  cult  of  the  dead  as 
tutelary  spirits  are  the  Californians,  Dakotas,  and  Zunis. 
A  clan-ancestor  may  be  an  animal,  mythological,  not  real 
with  preposterous  attributes  and  he  may  be  pleased  to  see 

1  In  the  lowest  totemism  the  totem  is  eaten  regularly ;  then  it  is 
eaten  ceremonially;  then  not  eaten  at  all.  See  above,  p.  52;  also  a 
paper  by  the  writer  in  the  Jour.  Am.  Or.  Soc.,  38,  p.  1451,  1918. 


82  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

his  descendants  dance  in  skins  like  his,  but  this  is  an  honour 
paid  to  a  grandparent,  not  a  general  "  ancestor-worship." 
The  Redskin  dead  as  a  class  are  not  worshipped  with  such  a 
dance.  So  in  South  America  there  may  be  an  ancestral 
clan-god,  an  animal  or  star,  who  is  "  danced  "  while  ances- 
tors in  general  are  ignored.  Neither  fear  of  ghosts  nor  a 
decent  regard  for  the  lately  deceased  is  ancestor-worship; 
nor  is  general  ancestor-worship  proved  by  skin-clad  or 
masked  dancers. 

Totems  favoured  in  Alaska  are  bear,  wolf,  whale,  and 
frog.  To  the  east  all  sorts  of  animals  become  totems  but 
are  also  revered  without  being  totems,  such  as  the  vulture,  a 
California  totem,  raven,  crane,  owl,  as  lord  of  the  dead, 
wolf,  hare,  and  snake.  Serpents,  like  pigeons,  represent 
souls  of  the  dead  and  Hurons  and  Algonkins  regard  the 
rattler  or  other  "  grandfather "  snakes  as  their  kin. 
Mound-serpents  in  the  south-west  represent  tutelary  earth- 
snakes.  The  Creek  earth-snake,  which  was  adopted,  by  the 
Hurons,  wore  a  gem  on  its  head  and  its  "  horns  "  were  big 
medicine.  Conspicuous  is  the  rain-serpent  (lightning)  as  a 
fertility-demon  associated  with  the  thunder-bird,  which  Al- 
gonkin  and  Iroquois  made  into  thunder-folk.  Dogs  were 
sacrificed  to  the  Lake-serpent.  Mythical  birds  make  the 
wind. 

Oneida  means  the  place  of  the  holy  stone.  Sleeping  giants 
and  profile  rocks  created  historical  myths,  but,  apart  from 
these,  there  were  potent  stones  just  as  rivers,  waterfalls,  etc., 
had  each  its  potency  and  were  revered  with  food  and  tobacco 
offerings,  presented  to  the  unknown  power  called  Oki,  Wa- 
kanda,  or  Orenda.  To  this  class  belongs  the  Manito,  which 
in  the  East  was  sometimes  a  spirit  but  was  generally  syn- 
onymous with  the  vaguer  Dakota  Wakanda. 

There  is  in  the  North  no  philosophical  religion  till,  among 
the  Zuni,  Awonawilona  "  evolves  from  himself  the  uni- 
verse," and  he  is  probably  not  wholly  a  native  god.  The 
powers  spiritual  were  controlled  largely  by  medicine-men, 
who  assisted  the  chiefs  at  the  festivals  of  moon  and  maize, 


RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  83 

and  at  dances  for  war,  crops,  and  hunting.  Even  the  ad- 
vanced Hopi,  who  were  related  to  the  Zuni  and  revered  sun, 
moon,  fire,  rain,  and  mother  Earth,  had  no  Supreme  Spirit. 
Still  less  did  the  northern  tribes  have  this  idea. 

It  is  a  common  belief  that  the  Algonkins  and  Iroquois 
revered  a  Great  Spirit  as  God.  But  what  happened  in 
Africa  happened  in  America.  The  good  missionaries  took 
Tanttim  and  Squantum  as  "  good  and  evil "  spirits.  But 
Tantum  is  merely  "  a  great  spirit,"  Manit,  and  Squantum  is 
an  angry  spirit.  Among  the  Passamaquoddies  this  "  dual- 
ism "  expressed  itself  in  the  form  of  an  Evil  Wolf  and  a 
"  good-natured  Liar,"  a  clownish  spirit  who  deceived  his 
foes  like  Ulysses  and  like  him  got  a  reputation  for  it.  Yet 
this  Liar,  Kuloskap,  has  also  been  enlisted  as  a  proof  that 
the  natural  Indian  had  a  God.  Natural  Indian,  because  the 
Indian  of  today,  especially  when  he  is  a  college-graduate, 
is  no  more  a  natural  expression  of  Redskin  belief  than  Mr. 
Batchelor's  Ainu  expresses  that  savage's  original  concep- 
tion of  spirit.  The  Redskin,  it  is  said,  "  sought  the  soli- 
tude and  there  communed  with  God."  When  an  Indian 
sought  the  solitude  for  spiritual  aid  it  was  to  get  a  vision 
of  some  animal  that  would  serve  as  a  totem  or  to  consult 
with  the  Great  Hare,  or  some  other  culture-hero,  or  to 
drum  up  weather.  This  Kuloskap,  for  example,  was 
father  and  model  of  the  "drummers"  (wizards),  who 
could  govern  the  weather,  cast  spells,  sink  below  earth's 
surface,  become  serpents,  and  in  this  guise  approach  women. 
The  eastern  Algonkins  believed  in  any  number  of  small 
spirits ;  they  saw  a  spirit  in  every  tree  and  waterfall,  but,  till 
the  missionaries  discovered  him,  they  never  conceived  of 
Cod.1 

In  general,  real  gods  are  few  in  the  North.  One  tribe 
usually  has  four  or  five,  the  Four  Winds  and  an  animal- 

1  The  two  Algonkin  spirits  called  Mechee  and  Gechee,  who  live 
respectively  in  a  cave-hell  and  a  solar-boat  heaven,  and  the  Two 
Brothers,  whose  son  guides  souls  to  hell  and  is  the  divine  son  of 
a  "  woman  from  heaven "  are  a  mixture  of  native  and  missionary 
ideas. 


84  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

spirit  regarded  as  the  ancestral  hero.1  Totemism,  zoolatry, 
and  Shamanism  characterize  the  cult;  polytheism  and  ad- 
vanced solar  worship  belong  to  the  South.  Real  ancestor- 
worship  is  not  a  marked  American  trait.  The  cult  of  a 
Michabo  or  Hiawatha  has  long  enough  been  mistaken  for 
the  "  worship  of  a  Supreme  Spirit  of  Light." 

These  two  beings  are  typical.  Michabo  was  not  a  light- 
god  but  an  idealized  animal;  while  Hiawatha  (Iroquoian) 
was  possibly  a  real  man,  though  also  idealized.  Creator- 
animals,  however,  are  sometimes  more  than  one,  even  in  the 
same  tribe.  Thus  the  Mohegans  had  three,  bear,  deer,  and 
wolf.  Michabo  of  the  Algonkins  resembles  the  culture-god 
of  Mexico,  snake,  sun,  and  hero  all  in  one.  Stories  of  cre- 
ation result  in  many  myths  of  origin,  several  deluge-tales, 
and  a  general  theory  of  troglodyte  ancestors,  which  last  may 
contain  historical  truth.  The  Shawnees  are  the  only  In- 
dians who  think  they  came  from  another  land,  led  across  a 
flood  by  the  Turtle.  Myths  of  creation  led  to  many  reli- 
gious spectacles  of  dramatic  form.  Direct  descent  from  a 
dog  was  claimed  by  the  Digger  Indians.  Similar  origins  are 
ascribed  to  various  tribes,  but  the  totem,  as  already  ex- 
plained, is  not  identical  with  the  ancestor. 

In  matrilinear  tribes  certain  deities  belong  to  women, 
who  have  the  charge  of  sundry  rites,  as  among  the  Iro- 
quois.2  Tutelary  powers  are  opposed  to  those  who  use 
their  Orenda  for  an  evil  purpose,  that  is,  disadvantageous 
to  the  individual  or  tribe.  Sacrifice  thus  becomes  an  at- 
tempt to  secure  power;  communion  with  the  deity  is  an 
occult  rite  for  the  same  end. 

The  priesthood  of  the  Indians  ranged  from  medicine-man 

iFor  example,  Michabo.  It  is  this  spirit  that  Dr.  Brinton  re- 
garded as  "god  of  light"  and  on  the  strength  of  which  he  postu- 
lated moral  dualism. 

2  The  Iroquois  were  especially  regardful  of  women;  property 
was  inherited  through  them ;  they  had  charge  of  rites  in  connexion 
with  the  earth-power  and  the  "  wise  women,"  as  in  Germany,  were 
consulted  by  the  chiefs.  The  murder  of  a  woman  cost  twice  that 
of  a  man. 


RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  85 

to  chief  pontiff,  according  to  the  general  culture  of  the 
tribe.  Among  the  ruder  northern  tribes  there  was  no  regu- 
lar corporation  of  priests,  only  irregular  jugglers  and  medi- 
cine-men. The  Nez  Perce  among  the  Shahaptians  had  he- 
reditary priests,  but  these  Indians  were  more  cultivated  than 
the  surrounding  Chinooks,  although  without  agriculture  and 
living  in  communal  houses  like  the  Chinooks.  Among  the 
Pueblos,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  a  war-chief  and  a 
peace-chief  or  priest,  the  latter  being  assisted  by  magicians, 
and  cult-societies  having  mythic  traditions  and  a  religious 
pharmacopia.  Among  the  Muskhogeans,  the  Choktaws 
had  a  priesthood  handed  down  from  father  to  son  without 
restriction,  whereas  the  Nez  Perce  priests  were  both  male 
and  female  and  the  priesthood  was  limited  to  priests  who 
gave  favourable  prognostications.  The  war-chief  was  os- 
tensibly the  master  of  the  medicine-man;  but  in  times  of 
religious  activity  he  never  did  anything  without  the  latter's 
consent.  The  Algonkin  Shawnees  kept  the  priesthood  in 
one  family  or  totem  clan,  as  did  the  Iroquois  Cherokees,  till 
the  insolence  of  one  family,  the  Nicotani,  thus  honoured, 
became  so  great  that  the  tribe  slaughtered  every  member 
of  the  family  and  handed  over  the  priesthood  to  another. 
The  Chippeway  (Algonkins)  had  a  college  of  elders,  but  it 
was  more  a  historical  society  than  a  religious  priesthood, 
though  it  contained  priests.  The  nearest  approach  to  a 
departmental  priesthood  in  the  North  was  the  distinction 
made  by  the  Algonkins  between  the  conjurer,  Meda,  the 
prophet,  Jossakid,  and  the  ordinary  medicine-man,  Wau- 
beno;  and  the  distinction  made  by  the  Iroquois  between 
men  and  women  as  priests  or  medicine-men  of  spirits  in 
general  and  priestesses  of  earth-powers. 

In  the  cult,  the  most  universal  elements  were  prayer, 
smoke,  sacrifice,  fast,  bath,  and  dance.  Prayer  accompa- 
nied initiations  and  was  exercised  on  ordinary  occasions, 
when  offerings  were  made  or  wishes  were  directed  to  the 
gods.  It  was  often  no  more  than  a  series  of  ejaculations, 
sometimes  a  silent  meditation.  The  simplest  sacrifice  was 


86  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  daily  offering  of  smoke,  which  lent  also  a  religious  force 
to  the  peace-pipe.  The  Indian  offered  four  puffs  to  the 
Four  Winds  or  Directions,  which,  with  the  national  Hare, 
were  the  only  real  gods  recognized  by  the  eastern  Algonkins 
in  1626.  The  god  of  war  was  worshipped  by  the  Iroquois 
with  human  victims  (as  were  the  ghosts)  and  such  a  god 
was  recognized  also  by  the  Pueblos.1  Ordinary  sacrifices 
were  those  of  food  or  dogs  and  other  animals. 

Cult  and  mythology  are  influenced  by  the  number  four, 
which  represents  the  cardinal  points  or  four  winds  as  benefi- 
cent spirits  of  the  sky  in  antithesis  to  earth.  A  Siouan  boy 
is  placed  upon  a  stone  representing  earth  and  then  the  priest 
prays  to  each  of  these  Four  Gods  of  Weal  in  his  behalf. 
Four  is  a  holy  number  with  the  Sioux,  Algonkins,  etc. 
Clan-divisions  and  religious  dances  are  found  among  the 
Northern  Indians  in  fours  and  eights ;  four  or  eight  ances- 
tral beings  are  named  by  the  Navajos,  Shawnees,  Iroquois, 
etc. 

The  fast  and  bath  often  went  together,  purgation,  some- 
times medicinal,  by  fasting  being  followed  by  a  ceremonial 
bath,  either  in  the  form  of  a  sweat-bath  for  the  individual 
or  a  bath  in  a  lake  or  river  by  a  tribe  at  certain  seasons. 
This  religious  exercise,  to  expel  demons,  was  also  medici- 
nal. Disease  and  evil  went  away  on  the  water.  After 
burial,  infection  was  washed  away  by  the  Navajo.  The 
Cherokees,  like  the  Aztecs,  Mayas,  and  Peruvians,  had  a 
form  of  baptism,  when  the  name  was  given.  Baptismal 
sprinkling,  that  the  child  might  be  "  born  again,"  horrified 
early  missionaries.  Water-cult,  apart  from  the  bath,  is  uni- 
versal (worship  of  stream,  waterfall,  etc.).  But  one  aspect 
of  water,  the  Fountain  of  Youth,  was  not  indigenous ;  only 
healing  springs  were  known. 

1  The  Pueblos  were  influenced  by  Spanish  and  perhaps  by  Mexican 
culture  and  their  religion  is  probably  not  all  native.  They  wor- 
shipped a  god  of  light,  of  war,  earth-gods,  sky-gods,  a  goddess  of 
love  (Mexican?),  and  master  of  life,  as  a  group  of  great  gods 
ranged  over  countless  lesser  spirits  of  nature  (as  well  as  ghosts). 


RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  87 

The  fast  also  introduced  the  dance,  producing  an  ec- 
static state.  The  dance  was  of  universal  religious  appli- 
cation; it  was  accompanied  by  song,  the  latter  occasionally 
recognized  as  praise  of  a  god,  but  usually  of  historical  char- 
acter, when  not  a  mere  ululation.  Religious  dances,  known 
in  the  North  on  all  festive  and  warlike  occasions,  were  elab- 
orated in  the  South,  but  even  in  the  North  they  led  to  dra- 
matic shows,  such  as  Penn  describes  as  "  antics,"  that  is, 
round  dances  with  song  and  pantomime.  The  Pueblo  Ca- 
chinas  were  regular  dramatic  dances,  representing  creation 
and  other  serious  mysteries,  performed  by  masked  act- 
ors (priests)  with  a  public  chorus.  Exorcising,  conjuring, 
and  dancing  all  went  together  among  the  Algonkins, 
whose  tribal  hero  Michabo  was  adept  at  all  these  perform- 
ances. 

The  cult  as  a  whole  is  apotropaic  but,  at  the  same  time, 
propitiatory  and  largely  for  the  purpose  of  gain.  As  pro- 
pitiatory is  to  be  regarded  the  simple  prayer  or  offering 
with  which  the  Indian  reacts  to  the  supposed  presence  of  a 
possibly  inimical  power,  on  sight  of  a  new  phenomenon  of 
impressive  character.  For  gain,  prayer  and  sacrifice  are 
offered  to  tutelary  powers  not  naturally  inimical.  In  fast- 
ing and  prayer  together  there  is  also  the  feeling  of  entering 
into  communion  with  the  spirit,  especially  a  totem-spirit. 
It  is  difficult  to  determine  whether  religious  expression  is 
ethical ;  thanksgiving  appears  only  in  the  highest  forms  of 
native  religion.  Some  certain  expression  thereof  is  attrib- 
uted to  the  Iroquois,  but  the  ruder  savages,  those  on  the 
western  coast,  do  not  know  what  it  is  to  be  thankful  even 
to  man,  much  less  to  spirits.  Probably  the  highest  expres- 
sion is  the  prayer  for  mercy  and  help,  e.  g.  of  the  Algonkin ; 
or,  as  do  ut  des,  of  the  Iroquois  Huron :  *'  Spirit  of  this 
place,  we  give  thee  tobacco ;  so  help  us,  save  us  from  the 
enemy,  bring  us  wealth,  bring  us  back  safely." 

American  eschatology  ranges  all  the  way  from  agnosticism 
to  the  joyous  certainty  of  the  Sioux,  who  believe  in  three 
souls  and  a  heaven 


88  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Where  game  is  always  plentiful 

And  winter  knows  no  cold, 
Where  trees  will  bear  perennial  fruit, 

And  squaws  will  never  scold. 

Occasionally  there  is  found  a  tribe  without  notion  of 
future  life.  Thus  an  Oregon  tribe  (Pend  d'Oreilles)  be- 
lieves in  the  guardian  spirit  and  in  a  divine  old  woman, 
the  cause  of  all  their  woes  (also  a  belief  of  India  and 
Yezo),  but  has  no  word  for  soul  and  no  conception  of  a 
future  life.  The  soul  to  most  Indians  is  "  shadow "  or 
"  breath,"  but  vital  forces  or  souls  were  often  multiplied. 
The  Siouan  "  third  soul "  either  went  to  the  heaven  de- 
scribed above  or  to  a  temporary  hell  or  purgatory,  where 
trees  bear  only  icicles.  Thence  returning,  however,  it  came 
to  earth  and  received  a  new  chance,  but,  if  again  wicked,  re- 
turned to  hell.  The  more  civilized  Algonkins  and  Iroquois 
believed  in  two  souls,  one  remaining  at  the  grave  and  one 
going  to  the  (Huron)  Happy  Hunting  Ground,  unless  it 
was  a  weak,  evil  soul,  when  it  failed  to  get  anywhere. 
Some  Oregon  tribes  had  a  soul  in  every  part  of  the  body 
and  the  island  Caribs  likewise  imagined  a  soul  in  every 
pulsation. 

The  spirit  took  four  days  to  reach  its  goal  and  was  lighted 
thither  by  torches,  lit  by  the  mourners,  which  also  served 
to  terrify  evil  spirits  (like  our  corpse  candles).  Bones  were 
collected  with  a  view  to  resurrection.  Buried  articles  were 
broken,  to  "  kill  "  them,  as  in  India.  The  passage  to  the  next 
world  among  the  Hopi  was  by  the  underground  Colorado 
canon,  out  of  which  the  tribe  originally  emerged.  Often 
there  is  a  log  to  cross  over  a  swamp  and  automatically  the 
coward  (sinner)  falls  into  the  mud  and  disappears  for  ever, 
while  the  brave  goes  to  glory.  The  parted  way  was  marked 
for  some  Algonkins  by  a  lightning-flash  and  by  the  appear- 
ance of  a  spirit  to  lead  the  good  to  bliss  (cf.  the  Persian 
Bridge).  In  the  West,  the  Athapascans  suspended  the  dead 
on  poles ;  the  Chilcoots  buried,  and  the  Babines  cremated  the 
corpse.  Some  of  the  Plains  Indians  also  placed  the  dead  on 


RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  89 

trees  or  a  staging.  The  Algonkins  burned  the  great,  know- 
ing that  they  would  go  to  heaven ;  but  doubtful  or  ordinary 
people  were  buried,  that  they  might  come  back  after  staying 
with  the  shades  and,  finding  their  growth-soul  ghost  amid 
their  bones,  be  reincarnated  in  human  form.  It  was  this 
growth-soul  that  was  eaten  by  foes  for  nutrition  of  soul  in 
themselves.  The  soul-strength  in  the  hair  was  thus  carried 
off  by  scalping;  the  scalped  brave  being  the  slave  of  the 
scalper  in  the  next  life.  If  mean  shades  were  not  drowned 
in  mud  they  led  the  life  suitable  to  cowards  and  dis- 
eased people.  The  Huron's  bridge  to  the  next  world  was 
guarded  by  a  dog;  a  common  notion,  based  on  the  obvious 
fact  that  clogs  eat  the  dead.  Algonkins  and  Dakotas 
(Siouan)  believed  in  a  snake-bridge  to  heaven,  perhaps  the 
Milky  Way.  Coast-dwelling  Athapascans  thought  a  boat 
conveyed  souls.  Animal  metempsychosis  after  death  was 
not  usually  recognized,  though  always  possible;  in  life  a 
medicine-man  could  become  an  animal  (were-wolf).  The 
Siouan  Dakotas  believed  that,  to  become  a  first-class  wizard, 
one  must  have  been  reincarnated  four  times  in  the  same 
body,  "  dreaming  of  gods  between  times,"  when  borne  about 
by  winds,  and  thus  learning  occult  secrets.  In  this  way 
they  also  imbibed  the  sacred  language  of  the  spirits.2 

The  general  marks  of  mourning  were  mutilations,  break- 
ing of  finger-joints,  gnashing,  discarding  of  ornaments, 
blackening  the  face,  sacrifice  of  property,  and  putting  clay 
upon  the  head.  The  hair  was  unbound,  sometimes  cut  off 
and  thrown  into  the  grave.  Hair-cult  is  a  marked  feature.1 

1  All  the  way  from  Algonkin  to  Aztec  the  wizard  affects  a  secret 
language  described  as  "affected."     Probably  it  was  like  the  Hindu 
"god-language"  (old  dialect),  but  also  it  was  enunciated  in  a  "bird- 
voice,"  an  unintelligible  murmur.     Generally,  a  divine  voice  is  a  low 
confused   sound,   not  like  the  voice  of  gods  in   India,  who  shout 
with  a  deafening  noise,  unless  they  are  disguised,  probably  because 
they  are  still  natural  phenomena. 

2  Hair  is  an  index  of  vigour,  vitality,  ability.    Hence  the  Mandan 
(Siouan)    with   the   longest   hair   became   chief.    Horse-hairs   were 
sometimes  utilized  to  lengthen  a  man's  own  hair  and  aid  him  in 
securing  leadership. 


90  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

To  insure  life  it  was  buried  in  deep  vegetation  or  hung  upon 
trees.  Widows  mourned  by  cutting  off  their  hair,  eating 
little,  and  screaming  a  good  deal.  Some  tribes  slaughtered 
dogs  and  slaves  at  the  grave. 

It  will  be  advantageous  in  conclusion  to  turn  from  the 
general  or  universal  characteristics  of  American  religion  to 
a  more  special  consideration  of  some  higher  groups.  As  we 
have  seen,  in  the  case  of  the  Iroquois,  to  gain  Orenda 
(spirit-power)  is  the  object  of  sacrifice.  Tutelary  powers 
are  thus  implicitly  opposed  to  spirits  using  Orenda  for  evil. 
The  festivals  of  light  and  of  maize  first  drive  away  sin 
(evil)  and  then  induce  weal.  The  sacrifice  with  a  dog  is 
for  the  purpose  of  revitalizing  the  powers  of  life ;  hence  too 
the  old  fire  is  renovated.  The  god  of  life  is  at  the  same  time 
the  god  of  vegetation  and  in  Iroquois  religion  he  stands  op- 
posed to  the  god  of  winter  and  death.  A  number  of  gods 
are  solely  nature-powers,  Wind,  Dawn,  Fire-dragon,  etc. 
From  such  a  religion  we  can  draw  but  one  conclusion,  that 
nature  as  exhibited  in  phenomena  is  deified  by  savages,  who 
do  actually  feel  themselves  encompassed  and  protected  by 
nature-spirits,  with  whom  man  may  become  allied  and  with 
whom  he  may  commune.  The  Cherokees  (Iroquois)  may 
be  described  as  polytheistic  zoolatrists,  perhaps  totemic, 
who,  while  they  recognized  an  antithesis  of  good  and  evil 
powers,  knew  nothing  of  an  Evil  Spirit  as  opposed  to  a  Su- 
preme Spirit,  till  taught  otherwise  by  the  whites.  They 
had  no  idea  of  God,  Devil,  Heaven,  or  Hell  as  ethical  con- 
ceptions. They  had  tribal  gods  living  above  the  visible  sky, 
but  these  were  neither  good  nor  evil.  They  connect  closely 
with  the  Aztecs  in  believing  in  animal  types  as  divinities 
and  interpreting  nature  in  animal  terms,  the  lightning  being 
a  horned  serpent,  the  hawk,  dog,  and  spider  as  divinities 
being  archetypical  types  of  the  corresponding  actual  ani- 
mals, and  the  rabbit  being  an  ideal  spirit.  Further, 
they  resemble  the  Aztecs  in  worshipping  elemental  gods, 
sun,  fire,  water,  etc.,  and  natural  objects  such  as  stones, 
and  in  ascribing  divine  nature  to  a  plant  (ginseng),  while 


RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  91 

they  regarded  as  a  Red  Man  the  phenomenon  of  lightning- 
thunder.1 

Of  the  Algonkins  sufficient  has  been  said  in  general;  but 
some  traits  of  the  Cheyenne  may  be  noticed,  as  the  sun- 
dance  here  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  that  mixture  of  prayer 
and  magic  which  is  found  in  most  fertility  rites.  It  also 
shows  that  the  cult  of  the  sun  in  this  form  is  a  cult  of  phe 
nomena,  not  of  ghosts.  The  rite  unites  war  and  fertility 
The  sun-dance  is  to  reanimate  nature,  vegetal  and  animal. 
This  is  and  always  has  been  the  chief  religious  rite  of  the 
Indians ;  it  may  be  called  Nature's  renascence.  The  rite 
of  the  Cheyenne  is  not,  like  that  of  the  Siouans,  a  tribal, 
but  an  individual  act,  a  vow  fulfilled  in  return  for  a  dan- 
ger escaped.  Its  ceremonial  constituents  are  the  pipe,  dance, 
song,  and  sweat-bath,  aided  by  the  rattle,  drum,  and  paint. 
The  rite  is  one  of  sympathetic  magic  but  is  united  with  a  call 
for  divine  assistance.  Thus,  at  the  Fifth  Paint,  the  priest 
spreads  the  sacrificial  straw,  or  sage-brush  bunches,  in  four 
heaps  around  the  altar  and  in  one  for  the  sun.  The  four 
are  of  course  for  the  direction-spirits.  On  these  dances 
the  patron  (maker  of  the  New  Lodge  of  Life),  praying  to 
the  Four  and  to  the  sun,  while  others  sing  and  offerings  are 
made;  in  conclusion  they  give  thanks  (to  the  gods).  The 
same  spirit  infuses  the  general  dance  of  the  people,  who 
dance  through  sundry  songs  till  they  are  reeling  and  stag- 
gering in  an  effort  to  attain  to  the  Four  Gods  of  direction. 
They  break  the  fast  with  purification  by  purgation  and  a 
sweat-bath,  and  with  the  ritual  pipe.  Painted  lines  on  the 
body  represent  sun,  moon,  and  stars  and  are  "  roads  of 
prayer  "  to  the  heart.  Torture  by  suspension  is  now  prac- 
tised in  a  modified  form  by  the  Cheyenne ;  formerly  it  was 
undoubtedly  the  custom  to  swing  with  the  sun;  the  object  of 
the  whole  rite  being  to  perpetuate  the  life  of  the  tribe,  as  a 
dramatic  representation  of  creation  or  rather  re-creation, 

1  Their  religious-medicinal  "  literature "  was  reduced  to  writing 
by  a  native,  "  Sequoyah,"  in  1821.  These  Cherokees  are  southern 
Iroquois  of  Virginia  (now  removed). 


92  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

to  renew  life  in  answer  to  the  prayer  of  him  who  has  vowed 
the  rite  in  the  name  of  the  tribe.  It  is  the  Great  (Medicine) 
Spirit  that  answers  this  prayer.  The  rite  was  taught  them 
of  old  by  their  culture  hero. 

As  we  approach  Mexico  we  come  nearer  to  the  cult  and 
belief  of  the  tribes  of  Central  and  Southern  America. 
Among  the  ceremonies  of  the  Hopi  are  to  be  observed  the 
rites  at  the  winter  solstice:  maize,  chewed  first  (saliva  as 
strength),1  is  put  into  a  bowl  containing  heart-powder  and 
other  ingredients;  meal  is  cast  into  the  air,  like  smoke,  for 
an  offering  to  deities;  asperging,  smoke,  fast,  song,  dance, 
and  prayer  make  the  rite.  The  dance  is  here  widdershins, 
against  the  sun,  because  the  dancer  heads  to  the  place  of  de- 
parted spirits.  Masks  with  frog-figures  for  fertility  are 
worn  by  men  dramatically  suggesting  human  fertility  scenes ; 
the  god  of  generation  appears  decked  with  corn  and  rain- 
and  sun-signs  with  actual  vegetables  attached,  around  whom 
dance  the  group.  Drums,  whistles,  rattles,  and  crook  entice 
rain;  willow-wands  with  feathers  are  fastened  to  or  placed 
near  animals  and  trees  "  for  increase."  The  four  direction- 
spirits  are  represented  by  colours,  North,  yellow;  West, 
green ;  South,  red ;  East,  white ;  but  "  above  "  and  "  below  " 
are  here  added  (black  and  variegated).  Corn  and  rain- 
rites  here  prevail,  not  ghost-rites,  of  which  there  is  scarcely 
a  trace,  except  food  placed  at  the  grave.  Symbolism  re- 
mains from  magic  (smoke  as  a  cloud,  drenching  with 
water).  Like  Mexican  belief  is  that  in  the  Plumed  Serpent, 
the  male  counterpart  of  Mother  Earth,  a  god  of  the  under- 
world ;  and  that  in  the  ancestral  culture  hero.  Peculiar  and 
interesting  is  the  phenomenon  of  paired  gods,  each  male 
having  its  female  form  or  being  androgynous,  rarely  two 
males ;  but,  as  in  Mexico,  there  are  two  brother  suns.  Such 
a  pair,  as  ancestors  of  the  race,  is  worshipped ;  but  the  cult 

1  Thus  in  the  preparation  of  the  Peruvian  intoxicant  acca,  the 
maize  is  first  chewed  by  women,  then  boiled  and  fermented  (the 
saliva  is  "medicinal").  Markham,  Incas  of  Peru,  London,  1911, 
p.  127. 


RELIGIONS  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  93 

of  an  originating  pair  of  this  sort  by  no  means  implies  a 
general  "  worship  of  the  souls  of  the  dead,''  as  Fewkes 
thinks.1  Noticeable  too  is  the  Hopi  idea  of  the  sky  as  a 
bird-man  or  bird-snake.  Sacrifice  is  made  mainly  to  deities, 
as  in  Mexico,  and  Southern  also  is  the  form  of  ritual  puri- 
fication. These  elements  unite  or  bridge  the  religions  of 
North  and  South,  as  the  Algonkin  sun-rite  of  torture  and 
the  Siouan  swing-rite,  to  strengthen  the  sun,  lead  to  Aztec 
heliolatry. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

H.  J.  Rink,  The  Eskimo  Tribes,  Copenhagen,  1887;  Tales  and 
Traditions  of  the  Eskimo,  London,  1875. 

Franz  Boas,  in  Proceedings  and  Transactions  of  the  Royal  So- 
ciety of  Canada;  The  Central  Eskimo,  1888;  notes  on 
Indians  also  in  The  Mind  of  Primitive  Man,  New  York, 
1911. 

L.  M.  Turner,  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington,  Sixth,  1888, 
and  Eleventh,  1894,  Reports. 

Knud  Rasmussen,  People  of  the  Polar  North,  London,  1908. 

D.  G.  Brinton,  The  Myths  of  the  New  World,  Philadelphia, 
1896. 

G.  A.  Dorsey,  in  Field  Columbian  Publications,  1901,  on  the 
sun-dance,  etc. ;  also  Reports  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology, 
1894-95,  1897-98,  on  the  Hopi  and  other  tribes. 

Alice  C.  Fletcher,  Indian  Ceremonies,  Washington,  1883,  and 
The  Import  of  the  Totem,  1897. 

J.  G.  Miiller,  Geschichte  der  Amerikanischen  Urreligionen, 
Basel,  1855-1907. 

F.  T.  Waitz,  Anthropologie  der  Naturvolker,  in  and  iv,  Leip- 
zig, 1862. 

H.  H.  Bancroft,  The  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  States,  San 
Francisco,  1882-83. 

H.  R.  Schoolcraft,  The  American  Indians,  Buffalo,  1851;  The 
Myth  of  Hiawatha,  Philadelphia,  1856. 

Relations  des  Jesuits,  en  la  nouvelle  France,  Quebec,  1858; 
invaluable  reports  of  the  missionaries  from  1611-1645. 

George  Catlin,  Illustrations  of  the  Manners  .  .  .  of  the  North 
American  Indians,  London,  1845.  A  vivid  narrative  val- 
uable for  its  record  of  religious  customs. 

A.  A.  Goldenweiser,  Totemism,  An  Analytical  Study,  Journ. 
Am.  Folklore,  xxiii,  1910. 

1  Journal  of  Am.  Folklore,  xi.  194. 


CHAPTER  SEVEN 

RELIGIONS   OF   MEXICO,    CENTRAL  AND   SOUTH   AMERICA 

CULTURAL  centres  are  found  in  Mexico,  Yucatan,  Guate- 
mala, Colombia,  Ecuador,  and  Peru;  their  interrelation  is 
not  certain.  An  opinion  widely  disseminated  is  that  they 
were  originally  independent  growths  and  that  later  some  of 
them  united  to  form  a  new  syncretistic  religion.  Others 
imagine  external  influence  imported  across  the  ocean.  A 
third  opinion  is  that  each  of  these  local  religions  has  been 
more  or  less  influenced  by  immigration  from  the  north,  af- 
fected by,  and  in  turn  affecting,  the  native  local  religion. 
The  Guatemala  Quiches  were  related  to  the  Yucatan  Mayas, 
who  seem  in  turn  to  be  remotely  connected  with  the  Indians 
of  the  Antilles  and  the  Louisiana  Natchez,  as  the  Bahama 
Indians  are  related  to  the  littoral  Brazilians  and  Vene- 
zuelans. The  Mayas  had  old  settlements  about  Vera  Cruz 
and  elsewhere  in  Mexico.  On  the  western  coast,  a  branch 
of  the  Shoshoneans  appears  to  have  drifted  south  in  suc- 
cessive waves  of  immigration,  until,  ascending  the  Mexican 
table-lands,  they  pressed  back  the  anterior  Mayan  culture. 
These  savage  invaders  were  the  Nahuans,  a  branch  of  whom 
is  represented  later  by  the  Aztecs.  They  absorbed  more  or 
less  of  the  older  culture  called  Toltec,  either  Nahuan  or 
that  of  the  Maya  (Totonac  or  Huaxtecan  on  the  eastern 
coast)  and  their  advent  may  be  referred  to  about  the  sixth 
century  A.  D.  But  the  ruder  Nahuans  (Chichimec)  were 
absorbed  by  the  Aztec  confederacy  in  the  fifteenth  century. 
In  the  western  part  of  Mexico  the  Zapotec,  like  the  Mixtec, 
represent  a  pre- Aztec  civilization  (Nahuan  or  Mayan). 
From  this  western  coast  it  is  possible  that  emigrants  by  sea 
affected  the  culture  of  the  coast  of  Ecuador  and  Peru. 

94 


RELIGION  OF  CENTRAL  AMERICA  95 

Maya  (Quiche)  civilization  can  be  traced  back  to  400, 
possibly  200  A.  D.1  and  is  represented  by  the  culture  of  Vera 
Cruz,  Copan  in  Honduras,  Quiriga  in  Guatemala,  and  Maya- 
pan  in  Yucatan.  It  here  includes  the  allied  Quiche  culture. 
Thus  the  same  god  appears  with  different  names.  Tohil  is 
a  Quiche  culture-god  appearing  as  a  thunder-god  but  cor- 
responding to  the  Votan  of  Tabasco  and  to  the  Yucatan 
Kukulkan,  who  in  turn  is  the  literal  equivalent  of  the  Aztec 
Quetzalcoatl,  the  "  feathered  serpent,"  a  culture-hero  dei- 
fied and  identified  with  the  god  of  peaceful  civilization.  In 
Maya  tradition,  Kukulkan  was  a  wise  man  who  led  his  peo- 
ple and  finally  departed  from  Mayapan  in  Yucatan  in  a 
western  direction,  that  is,  to  Mexico.  He  is  said  to  have 
come  to  Chichen  Itza  and  then  to  have  founded  a  new  town 
(Mayapan)  and  built  a  great  temple  (Chakanputan),  after 
framing  laws  and  making  the  wonderful  calendar,  which 
still  remains  as  a  monument  of  Mayan  intelligence.  His 
symbols,  bird  and  serpent,  unite  the  ideas  of  air  and  water 
(the  serpent  as  water  and  fertilizing  power)  into  one  con- 
ception of  light  and  life,  as  a  bird  alone  regularly  represents 
the  Yucatan  sun-god  and  a  snake  the  water-god. 

Even  more  important  is  the  Mayan  "  father  of  gods  and 
men,"  who  came  from  the  East  and  appears  as  a  god  of 
healing  as  well  as  of  creating.  This  was  Itzamna,  whose 
spouse  was  Ixchel,  the  Rainbow,  goddess  of  birth  and  medi- 
cine. Itzamna  was  later  identified  with  the  Eastern  Sun 
and  represented  life  and  knowledge.  He  was  the  arch- 
priest  and  inventor  of  writing  and  books.  Next  in  impor- 
tance stand  the  gods  of  agriculture.  There  was  a  maize- 
deity,  from  whose  head  sprouted  corn,  and  four  giants  or 
gods  of  agriculture  supported  the  sky.  The  agricultural 
deities  were  more  important  than  in  Mexico,  though  of  kin- 
dred sort.  They  were  the  great  Chac  and  several  subordi- 
nate little  Chacs.  Like  Tlaloc  in  Mexico,  Chac  was  first  of 
all  a  thunder-god.  Another  fertility  god  of  the  Mayas 

1 S.  G.  Morley,  Bureau  of  American  Ethnology,  1915,  thinks 
that  Mayan  civilization  was  "  fairly  on  its  feet "  by  200  A.  D. 


g6  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

steals  maize,  as  does  Tlaloc,  and  like  Tlaloc  the  Maya  gods 
of  this  class  carry  axes,  symbol  of  thunder-gods,  and  are 
associated  with  the  (also  Northern)  rain-serpent. 

A  marked  feature  of  Mayan  religion  is  the  number  of 
goddesses,  who,  as  in  Celtic  religion,  appear  as  patronesses 
of  arts,  as  of  jade-culture,  of  fabric-colouring,  etc.,  as  well 
as  patronesses  of  hunting  and  even  of  suicide,  a  death  that 
was  estimable  and  led  to  heaven.  Animals  were  revered 
and  even  vegetables  were  supposed  to  be  animate  and  con- 
sequently worthy  of  religious  consideration.  But,  to  get 
increase,  all  animals  had  to  be  sacrificed  by  proxy,  that  is, 
one  of  each  species  was  killed  at  a  great  spring  celebration. 
With  the  same  object,  there  was  a  celebration  at  which  once 
a  year  objects  were  renewed ;  as  the  fire  was  also  extin- 
guished and  renewed.  Although  by  far  not  so  blood-lusty 
as  the  Aztecs,  the  Mayas  with  their  typical  incense-offering 
had  many  animal  sacrifices,  in  which  the  heart  of  the  vic- 
tim was  seized  and  burned.  A  dog  here  usually,  as  in  the 
North,  takes  the  place  of  the  Aztec  human  victim,  espe- 
cially as  an  offering  to  the  fire-god.  Several  Mexican 
customs  were  eventually  adopted  by  the  Mayas,  such  as  the 
use  of  the  bow  in  battle,  the  shooting,  as  a  sacrifice,  of  war- 
captives,  and  probably  even  the  custom  of  offering  human 
victims.  Each  department  of  industry  had  its  peculiar  god 
and  the  general  affairs  of  men  had  each  its  own  divinity. 
Thus  the  god  of  travellers  was  the  North  Star ;  hunters  and 
fishers  of  Yucatan  had  special  gods;  while  disease-gods 
were  generally  venerated.  A  number  of  gods  presided  over 
evil  and  death.  With  the  great  death-god,  called  Skull  and 
Bones,  were  associated  sundry  war-gods,  who  presided  not 
only  over  war  but  also  over  sacrifice. 

The  Mayans,  like  the  Vedic  Aryans,  looked  upon  heaven 
as  a  restful  place  under  a  sacred  tree ;  hell  to  them  was  a 
cold  subterranean  place  past  the  four  rivers  (directions) 
of  four  colours,  where  lived  lords  forever  tormenting  earth- 
growths  above  them.  This  place  in  Quiche  is  called  Xibalba, 
but  another  Mayan  name  is  Mitnal,  ruled  by  its  like-named 


RELIGION  OF  CENTRAL  AMERICA  97 

god,  the  same  with  the  Aztec  Mictlan  and  its  special  ruler. 
Owls  and  bats  were  the  special  birds  of  hell  and  served  as 
ghostly  messengers. 

Noticeable  is  the  fact  that  the  high  priest  was  originally 
the  ruler ;  and  that  the  war-chief,  elected  for  a  term  of  four 
years,  was  revered  like  a  god ;  also,  that  war-god  feasts  are 
virtually  fertility-sacrifices,  the  canine  victim's  heart  being 
then  magically  treated  for  the  express  purpose  of  securing 
rain.  The  dance,  with  which  for  five  days  the  fertility-fes- 
tival concluded,  was  without  application  to  ghost-cult.  The 
canine  victim  appears  at  all  sorts  of  sacrifices,  even  at  that 
to  Hobnil,  god  of  bee-hives.  Blood-spilling,  except  at  sac- 
rifice, was  regarded  as  displeasing  to  the  gods,  and  a  pro- 
pitiatory bloodless  offering  was  made  by  hunters  to  offset 
their  necessary  disregard  of  this  fact. 

Festivals  were  marked  by  singing  and  dancing  and  at 
times,  as  at  a  feast  for  luck  in  war,  by  the  drunken  orgies 
which  characterize  those  of  Peru.  The  year  was  well  filled 
with  festivals,  especially  at  its  beginning  and  in  the  spring. 
Like  the  Aztecs  and  South  Americans,  the  Mayans  had  tra- 
ditions of  creation  and  deluge.  Kukulkan,  who  was  cele- 
brated with  dancing  and  song,  was  one  of  the  creators  and 
the  Quiche  Hurakan  was  another.1  Men  were  made  after 
animals,  of  clay ;  but  they  were  so  unintelligent  that  the  gods 
drowned  them  in  a  deluge.  They  that  escaped  became  mon- 
keys. A  second  creation  then  made  men  of  maize ;  the  gen- 
eral tradition  is  that  men  were  eventually  compounded  of 
maize  and  blood. 

Fasting  for  thirteen  days,  with  a  new  fire,  marked  the 
beginning  of  the  year,  in  July,  when  incense  and  other  means 
of  purification  were  employed  in  the  temples.2  The  object 

1  Peculiar  is  a  religious  dance  on  stilts  in  honour  of  Itzamna,  to 
avert  disease  and  other  evils.     From  a  related  West-Indian  form  of 
Hurakan  (god  of  storm  and  fertility)  is  derived  English  hurricane. 

2  The  temples  of  stone  still  show  the  marks  of  derivation  from 
wooden   structures.     Wooden    idols   were   regarded   as   holier   than 
stone,  probably  because  earlier,  and  they  too  were  purified  for  the 
new  year  in  an  elaborate  rite. 


9  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

of  all  Mayan  rites  was  to  avert  divine  wrath  and  gain  "  food, 
health,  and  long  life "  from  the  spirits.  In  general,  the 
Mayan  religion  resembles  that  of  Peru  rather  than  that  of 
Mexico;  its  temples  and  its  predominatingly  agricultural 
aspects  are  more  like  those  of  the  Peruvian  Chimus  than 
those  of  the  Nahuan  Aztecs.  On  the  other  hand,  Mayan 
religion  is  in  close  touch  historically  with  that  of  the  Aztecs 
and  has  a  similar  mythology,  especially  in  regard  to  its  cul- 
ture-gods. 

Exactly  what  was  the  connection  between  these  different 
groups  only  specialists  may  say,  and  they  disagree.  Prob- 
ably the  pre-Aztec  Nahuan  was  nearer  to  the  Mayan  than 
was  the  Aztec.  The  Nahuans  were  originally  nomads  op- 
posed to  the  sedentary  agriculturists  they  overcame,  but  as 
so  often  happens  they  were  culturally  overcome  themselves 
by  the  conquered.  The  Aztecs,  however,  retained  much  of 
their  own  savagery,  for  instance  the  practice  of  shooting 
war-captives  as  sacrificial  victims.  Their  religion  thus  con- 
sists of  two  early  elements,  worship  of  nomadic  and  of 
agricultural  deities,  to  which  is  later  added  the  cult  of 
priestly  creations,  mystic  deities. 

The  earliest  Mexican  cult,  of  springs,  lakes,  etc.,  has  left 
a  few  traces.  •  A  "  salt  goddess  "  was  celebrated  in  summer ; 
cave-temples,  some  oracular,  and  human  sacrifices  were 
known  to  the  Mixtec  and  Zapotec  tribes.  Agricultural  dei- 
ties were  generally  female  or  androgynous,  sometimes  asso- 
ciated with,  perhaps  later,  male  deities,  whose  wives  or 
sisters  they  have  become.  So  the  original  Maize  goddess, 
Chicome  Coatl,  is  reckoned  a  sister  of  Tlaloc,  whose  victims 
were  flayed.  Centeotl,  primarily  a  female,  became  "  son  " 
of  Tozi.  She  held  in  her  arms  her  daughter,  Young 
Corn  (Xilonen),  in  whose  honour  were  performed  rain- 
dances  in  June.1  On  the  west  coast,  Cueravahperi  was  a 

1  Centeotl  was  called  Lady  Serpent  and  Mother  ("grand- 
mother"). Her  victims  were  first  made  to  scatter  maize;  then  they 
were  flayed  and  the  pieces  of  their  bodies  were  used  as  fertility- 
charms.  Flaying,  for  sacrifice,  began  in  the  eleventh  century. 
Human  sacrifice  was  already  "Toltec"  (very  ancient).  With 


RELIGION  OF  MEXICO  99 

fertility-goddess,  whose  victims'  hearts  brought  rain.  Char- 
acteristic of  these  cruel  females  is  the  flaying  of  their  human 
victims,  whose  skins  were  then  worn  by  their  dancing 
priests,  an  inchoate  vegetation  drama,  analogous  to  the  duck- 
ptarmigan  contest  of  the  Eskimos  and  the  similar  but  veiled 
performances  in  higher  religions.  Here  at  least  there  is 
no  question  of  ghosts.  The  last-named  fertility-goddess 
offers  an  illuminating  example  of  divine  expansion.  As  fe- 
male spirit  of  fertility,  she  became  the  deity  of  maize  and 
other  plants,  including  medicinal  herbs ;  hence  patroness  of 
physicians  and  midwives  and  of  the  hot  bath ;  while  as  food- 
mother  she  was  exalted  as  mother  of  the  gods,  and  clothed  in 
serpents  as  fertility-signs.  At  the  maize  festival,  the  maize 
itself  was  first  decapitated  and  then  the  victims,  represent- 
ing maize,  were  also  decapitated;  after  which  their  hearts 
were  cast  into  hot  springs,  to  produce  rain-clouds.  Her 
festivals  were  in  March  and  April,  but  also  later,  as  if  to 
renew  her  waning  strength. 

The  oldest  Nahuan  human  sacrifice  merely  had  the  vic- 
tims' blood  enhance  vegetation  by  falling  on  the  ground  as 
they  were  shot.  Fertility  in  a  wider  sense  had  two  repre- 
sentatives, a  love-goddess  called  Xochi-quetzal,  wife  of 
Tlaloc  and  stolen  by  the  Nahuan  god  Tezcatlipoca,  and  the 
Huaxtec  goddess  Tlazolteotl.  The  former  was  a  corn  or 
earth-spirit,  and  patroness  of  love,  flowers,  and  embroidery. 
The  latter  represented  an  odd  combination,  being  goddess  of 
sensuality,  confession,  and  penitence;  she  may  have  had 
lunar  associations.  The  moon,  son  of  Tlaloc,  was  a  birth- 
god  associated  with  the  special  Rabbit-gods  of  fertility. 
Gods  and  goddesses,  connected  both  with  moon  and  harvest, 
also  represented  the  octli  (agave,  aloe)  and  other  intoxicat- 
ing plants.  They  are  expressly  called  countless  because 
"  there  are  countless  ways  of  getting  drunk."  x  The  reli- 

Xilonen,  compare  the  Greek  Kore;  compare  also  the  Greek  custom 
of   the  adoption   of  agricultural   female  spirits  by  the  later  gods, 
Hera  by  Zeus,  etc. 
1  Literally  "  four  hundred  rabbits,"  i.e.,  countless  fertility-spirits. 


100  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

gious  importance  of  intoxication  lies  in  its  giving  com- 
munion with  the  deity  by  ecstasy,  in  contrast  to  communion 
by  eating  the  god.  The  Totonac  custom  of  eating  dough 
images  of  the  god  implied  the  latter  communion ;  which  was 
more  drastically  effected  also  by  eating  the  victim  offered  to 
and  hence  identified  with,  the  deity;  whereas  the  tobacco- 
communion  (in  Tarascan)  was  a  form  of  drunkenness-ec- 
stasy. Ordinary  drunkenness  was  not  approved.  Even  a 
god,  in  Tarascan,  was  thrown  out  of  heaven  because  of  his 
drunken  habits.  As  with  Hephaistus,  the  fall  made  him 
lame. 

All  these  fertility-demons,  the  octli-demons  and  higher 
spirits,  were  under  Tlaloc,  the  greatest  god  of  the  early 
period,  to  whom  were  sacrificed  a  man,  representing  the 
male  serpent-god,  and  four  women,  representing  Mayauel, 
Xochi-quetzal,  and  other  fertility-goddesses.  He  is  the  god 
of  the  Eastern  Paradise  (Tlalocan),  where  warriors  go,1 
and,  as  rain-god,  presides  over  the  dropsical  and  drowned; 
but  also,  as  thunder-  and  lightning-god,  he  has  a  mountain 
dance-festival.  He  has  but  one  eye  and  his  victim's  heart 
is  cast  into  a  lake;  that  is,  his  water-nature  was  perhaps 
originally  part  of  his  general  sky-nature  (sun  as  eye?).  A 
pre-Aztec  god,  he  was  worshipped,  over  all  Mexico  and  be- 
yond it,  as  a  god  especially  connected  with  serpents  and  fer- 
tility. His  assistants,  the  Tlaloque,  emptied  celestial  vases, 
smiting  them  with  noisy  rods  (compare  the  Vedic  Par j  any  a; 
rain  and  thunder).  When  it  is  said  that,  despite  his  general 
beneficence,  he  "  stole  the  maize,"  we  may  assume  that  he 

One  of  these,  Mayauel,  wife  of  Patecatl,  was  worshipped  by  the 
Huaztecs,  notorious  drunkards,  as  having  four  hundred  breasts. 
This  was  the  form  of  the  maize-mother  Centeotl  and  seems  to 
show  that  Mayauel  also  was  originally  a  general  fertility-goddess, 
later  restricted  to  an  octli-deity.  Like  Ayopechtli,  the  birth-goddess, 
she  rides  a  tortoise.  Xochi-quetzal  (above)  as  a  male  (Xochipilli) 
deity  is  god  of  flowers,  dance,  song,  and  games,  and  becomes  a 
sun-god. 

1  Women  who  die  in  childbirth  go  to  the  Western  Paradise.  In 
Borneo  the  two  classes,  of  heroes  and  such  heroines,  go  to  one 
paradise  and  marry! 


RELIGION  OF  MEXICO  1 01 

stole  it  from  a  precedent  deity.  At  his  May  festival,  his 
priests  might  steal  from  any  one;  they  quacked  like  frogs. 
His  wife  bears  him  cloud-children.  He  alone  has  five  of  the 
annual  twenty-five  festivals.  Before  his  image  his  wor- 
shippers, clad  in  animal-skins,  danced  a  ceremonial  dance 
once  in  eight  years;  while  before  the  god  stood  a  tank  full 
of  snakes  and  frogs,  caught  in  the  mouth  by  Mazatec  (dis- 
trict) men,  who  then,  like  the  Pueblos,  danced,  holding 
these  reptiles  in  the  mouth.1  His  later  wife  was  Running 
Water ;  small  figures  called  Tepictoton,  representing  moun- 
tains, were  sacred  to  him.2  His  first  wife,  Earth,  was  stolen 
by  the  Aztec  god  (above).  His  most  pitiable  victims  were 
troops  of  little  children  who  (first  in  1018)  were  made  to 
weep  when  driven  to  be  sacrificed,  that  their  tears  might 
make  more  rain  in  the  February  ritual.  In  the  later  Aztec 
myth  of  ages,  Tlaloc  is  allotted  first  place  after  the  two 
Aztec  gods,  as  "  third  sun  "  (era),  which  shows  that  before 
Aztec  dominion  he  was  really  the  first. 

The  myth  of  the  Five  Ages  was  pre-Aztec  and  originally 
portrayed  ages  of  Earth,  Fire,  Air,  and  Water,  leading  to 
the  present  fifth  age.  When  the  Aztec  gods  were  all  con- 
verted into  forms  of  the  sun,  Tlaloc  was  also  so  converted, 
the  ages  were  then  termed  "  suns,"  and  the  second  and  third 
ages  were  inverted,  perhaps  to  give  precedence  to  the  fa- 
voured culture-god.  The  ages,  as  finally  arranged,  were 
first,  that  of  Tezcatlipoca  (as  sun),  which  ends  with  the 
destruction  of  giants  and  men  through  jaguars;  second,  that 
of  Quetzal-coatl,  when  men  became  monkeys  and  a  hurri- 
cane ended  all;  third,  that  of  Tlaloc,  when  men  were  de- 
stroyed by  a  rain  of  fire;  fourth,  that  of  Chalchiutlicue, 
when  the  deluge  came  and  men  became  fishes ;  and  fifth,  the 
present  age,  which  will  end  with  an  earthquake. 

1  Eight  years    seems   a   long   interval    for  this   ceremon}'.     It   is 
probably  astronomical.     Compare   the   Charila    (Delphi)    eight-year 
fertility   or   earth-mother    festival,   and    the   paper   by    W.    S.    Fox, 
Am.  Philolog.  Assoc.,  1916,  p.  xviii.    Joyce,  Mexican  Archaeology, 
London,  1914,  p.  74,  has  compared  the  Pueblo  rite. 

2  These  are  not  "  Lares  and  Penates,"  as  Reville  explained  them. 


102  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

The  Aztecs,  like  their  northern  relatives,  held  the  sun  as 
a  god,  and  this  god  they  found  revered  also  by  the  agricul- 
tural peoples  whom  they  conquered,  though  the  latter  also 
worshipped  earth-goddesses.  The  Aztecs  then  adopted  the 
goddesses,  as  wives  of  their  gods,  and  made  the  gods  forms 
of  their  sun-god,  who  measured  their  year,  and  by  whom, 
and  earth,  was  taken  the  primitive  Mexican  oath  (touching 
and  eating  earth  as  one  swore).  The  general  signs  of  the 
sun-god  are  quetzal-feathers,  disc,  yellow,  and  east;  he 
was  the  god,  teotl.  As  in  Chibcha  belief,  his  lady  was  the 
moon ;  he  is  sometimes  represented  as  "  son  of  Quetzal- 
coatl."  For  him,  when  born,  all  other  gods  sacrificed  them- 
selves, in  order  to  feed  him.  Hence  now  men  are  sacrificed 
to  feed  him,  not  in  his  own  but  only  in  other  forms.  It  is 
remarkable  that  Tonatiuh,  the  sun  per  se,  is  thus  without  a 
temple  and  sacrifice,  though  prayers  are  offered  to  him 
four  times  a  day  and  night.  He  is  identified  with  the  Aztec 
gods,  who  absorb  all  the  sacrifice  of  the  sun. 

But  older  than  these  sun-forms  are  the  primitive  Xiute- 
cutli,  called  Ue-ue,  the  "  old,  old  "  god  of  Fire,  portrayed 
as  black-green-yellow  and  having  a  golden  mirror,  who  was 
revered  in  the  domestic  cult  of  the  Tarascans  and  by  the 
Nahuan  Tepanec  in  the  form  of  a  papalotl  (butterfly),  or 
as  a  man  with  a  snake.  He  received  a  daily  libation  and 
offerings  and  a  yearly  sacrifice.  At  the  end  of  every  year, 
and  again  at  the  close  of  the  fifty-two  year  cycle,  a  fresh 
fire  was  kindled,  on  the  bare  breast  of  a  prisoner,  "  to  make 
the  sun  rise."  As  a  male  god,  Fire  dwells  in  water  (like 
Agni),  but  as  a  female  this  god  received  human  victims,  who 
were  first  half  burned  and,  before  death,  were  pulled  out  of 
the  fire,  that  their  still  beating  hearts  might  be  extracted 
for  sacrifice;  locks  of  their  hair  being  preserved  as  talis- 
mans. Besides  these  human  victims,  Fire  was  also  revered, 
in  the  last  month  of  the  year,  with  animals  burned  alive. 

To  these  pre-Aztec  deities  must  be  added  the  culture-god 
Quetzal-coatl,  the  feathered-serpent,  who  represents  pre- 
Aztec  or  Toltec  civilization.  Though  the  teacher  of  arts, 


RELIGION  OF  MEXICO  103 

as  of  agriculture,  for  he  found  the  corn  afterwards  stolen  by 
Tlaloc,  he  was  outwitted  and  driven  out  by  the  Aztec  god. 
But  his  Messianic  return  from  the  East  was  long  looked  for, 
till  the  Spaniard  appeared  as  his  reincarnation.  Coiled  up 
as  a  serpent  he  sleeps,  as  represented  in  stone,  till  he  wakes 
to  bring  a  new  era ;  or,  as  a  man  with  a  bird's  head  and  ex- 
tended tongue,  he  is  identified  with  the  Wind,  Ehecatl,  or 
Whisperer,  Tohil,  or  breeze  from  the  east,  which  brings 
spring.  He  is  averse  to  human  sacrifice,  except  as  his  priests 
draw  for  him  their  own  blood.  His  temple  is  not  a  pyra- 
mid but  roofed  and  domed,  with  a  simulated  serpent's 
mouth  as  entrance.  His  priests  wear  white  and  teach  the 
arts,  a  race  apart  from  the  black-robed  Aztec  priests.  His 
image  is  kept  covered,  like  a  medicine-bundle.  As  wind 
lulling  to  sleep,  he  is  also  invoked  by  thieves ! 

The  Aztecs  of  course  gave  precedence  to  their  own  great 
gods.  Out  of  the  pantheon  of  two  or  three  hundred  gods, 
there  were  some  fifteen  in  human  form  and  seven  or  eight  in 
animal  form  who  were  chief;  of  these,  two  were  pre-emi- 
nent, namely  Uitzilopochtli  and  Tezcatlipoca,  the  monstrous 
"  brother  "  gods  of  the  great  ziggurat  of  the  City  of  Mexico. 
The  former  was  the  Humming-bird,  called  also  "  hair 
of  the  Sun,"  for  he  was  mysteriously  born  of  the  Sun 
and  of  Coatlicue,  the  vegetation-goddess  as  earth-serpent, 
whose  other  sons  are  both  the  "  unnumbered  stars  "  and 
the  pre-Aztec  hunting-god  and  cloud-serpent,  Mixcoatl. 
With  Coatlicue,  after  slaying  her  unfilial  sons,  the  Hum- 
ming-bird at  last  ascended  to  heaven.  He  was,  as  Mextli, 
also  the  warrior-god  of  the  Aztecs.  His  small  image  was 
borne  before  fighters  by  his  black-robed  priests,1  whose  hair 
was  never  shorn  and  who  were  ordained  to  his  service  by  be- 
ing smeared  with  a  child's  blood.  The  servants  of  this  god 
were  the  chief  priests  of  the  Aztecs  and  his  service  as  war- 

1  So  in  Peru,  the  Chancas  carried  into  battle  the  image  of  their 
founder,  Uscovilca,  and  in  Colombia  the  Chibchas  carried  mummies 
of  famous  warriors,  to  inspire  courage  and  bring  victory.  Com- 
pare the  use  of  the  tabernacle  in  battle. 


104  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and-sun-god  demanded  an  unceasing  flow  of  human  blood. 
His  festivals,  in  May,  August,  and  December,  commemorate 
him  as  the  god  of  the  spring  and  summer ;  he  had  a  flower- 
feast  in  August  without  victims.  At  his  December  feast, 
his  image  in  dough  was  eaten  in  communion  by  his  wor- 
shippers, after  many  victims  had  been  slain. 

Tezcatlipoca  was  the  god  of  the  smoking  mirror.  He  has 
been  interpreted  as  the  winter-sun  who  drives  away  vege- 
tation ;  at  all  events,  a  cold  and  gloomy  god,  black  and  red 
in  colour,  who  gives  hard  laws  and  punishes  offenders  with 
disease  and  death ;  a  god  who,  like  the  Vedic  Varuna,  spies 
on  man.  He  wanders  through  the  city  by  night,  needing 
seats  placed  there  for  him.  He  is  identified  with  Mixcoatl 
as  inventor  of  fire  and  is  connected  with  Tlazol-teotl  as  a 
god  of  sin  and  confession.  He  also  appears  as  the  sun  and 
has  a  sacrifice  in  order  to  the  reviving  of  the  sun.  It  must 
be  as  sun  and  not  as  law-giver  that  he  is  ever  young  and 
the  god  of  banquets.  His  colours  and  his  mirror  make  him 
appear  as  a  special  form  of  Fire  (above).  His  image  also 
has  serpent  associations,  though  not  fundamental,  for  he  has 
a  face  "  like  a  bear."  He  is  the  embodiment  of  law  and 
harsh  justice,  nor  is  it  quite  obvious  that,  as  Reville  thinks, 
he  represents  any  natural  phenomenon.  His  statue  has  a 
gold  ear  into  which  pour  smoke-clouds  of  sacrifice  repre- 
senting prayers. 

Another  famous  god  is  the  "  flayed  "  Xipe,  yellow  like 
Centeotl  (above)  as  maize-god,  but  because  of  his  colour 
turned  into  the  goldsmiths'  god,  to  whom  were  offered  flayed 
captives  as  victims,  their  skins  being  carried  a  month  by 
the  captors.  He  is  also  a  war-and-fertility  god.1  The 
planet  Venus  was  a  war-deity  in  the  west.  Travellers  and 
merchants  had  as  god  of  their  class  Yucatecutli,  to  whom, 
represented  by  their  staves,  the  merchants  prayed  for  suc- 
cess. 

1  In  March  there  were  gladiatorial  fights  in  honour  of  Xipe,  the 
captive  victims'  hearts  being  torn  out ;  sometimes  they  were  shot 
to  death.  The  heart  and  blood  were  fertility-charms. 


RELIGION  OF  MEXICO  105 

Besides  such  gods,  the  Aztecs  worshipped  creator-gods 
of  the  eighth  heaven,  who,  like  Brahman,  were  rationalized 
beings,  not  supposed  to  be  active,  and  hence  were  not  much 
worshipped,  and  with  whom  the  national  god,  Uitzilopocruh, 
was  eventually  identified ;  or  they  served  as  medicinal  gods, 
who  sent  and  cured  diseases,  like  Apollo ;  though  there  was 
a  special  "  healer "  god.  Also  female  demons,  like  the 
Hindu  Mothers  around  Shiva,  were  generally  supposed  to 
send  children's  diseases.  Such  demons  were  usually  the 
souls  of  women  who  had  died  in  childbirth ;  they  served  the 
war-god  and,  since  war-gods  are  associated  with  lightning, 
they  appeared  as  lightning-flashes. 

The  death-god,  Mictlan-tecutl,  like  the  Hindu  Yama,  was 
placed  underground  (but  in  the  north),  where  he  and  his 
spouse  devour  those  who  die  of  old  age  and  disease;  the 
lords  of  this  place  being  fiends  who  torment  earth.  The 
passage  to  it  is  across  deserts,  through  crashing  hills,  winds 
that  cut  like  knives,  and  it  lies  beyond  four  (sometimes 
nine)  streams,  coloured  yellow,  red,  blue,  and  white. 
Tlaloc  (above)  has  an  eastern  paradise,  though  he  is  in  the 
south,  and  this  (Tulan  East)  is  at  the  source  of  four  rivers. 
As  already  explained,  warriors  and  those  who  die  of  water- 
diseases  (dropsy,  etc.)  or  lightning  go  to  him.  Warriors 
go  also  to  the  Sun-heaven,  descending  afterwards  to  earth 
as  humming-birds.  The  soul  or  "  shadow-breath  "  going  to 
Mictlan  is  escorted  by  a  red  dog ;  in  Peru  by  a  black  dog. 
At  death  the  dead  man  is  clothed  in  the  robes  of  his  god 
and  is  guarded  by  paper  amulets,  as  in  Egypt.  Some  souls 
go  to  Tulan  West,  where  the  sun  goes  down,  as  in  North 
America.  There  are  thus  various  places  for  the  dead ;  but, 
except  for  the  fact  that  disease  brings  its  own  fate  and 
bravery  a  better,  there  is  no  ethical  content  in  the  conception 
of  the  hereafter.  The  gods  were  not  regarded  as  immortal.1 

1  The  Aztecs,  like  the  Hindus,  had  an  annual  (September)  "re- 
turn of  the  gods,"  indicated  by  a  foot-print  on  maize,  when  a 
drunken  orgy  ensued  called  "washing  the  gods'  feet."  and  slaves 
were  burned  alive.  But  it  was  always  a  question  whether  the  gods 
would  live  longer  than  the  Cycle. 


106  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

The  religious  shambles  called  a  church  was  presided  over 
by  an  organization  of  priests,  monks,  and  nuns,  who  lived 
in  convents.  The  priests  made  sacrifice,  but  also  taught 
school.  Baptism,  absolution  on  confession,  and  communion 
by  eating  the  god's  image  of  dough,  or,  by  proxy,  the  vic- 
tim, were  practised.  The  cross  was  the  Four-fold  Tree  of 
Life.  The  teocalli  were  pyramidal,  ascended  by  outside 
steps,  five  to  nine  stories  high,  surmounted  by  altars.  That 
in  Mexico  City  was  eighty  feet  high ;  on  its  altars  burned  sac- 
rificial fires  almost  perennial.  In  the  city  were  six  hundred 
altars.  Thousands  of  priests  devoted  themselves  to  secur- 
ing victims.  They  taxed  the  community  for  their  services 
as  diviners  (by  means  of  snakes,  arrows,  seeds,  water,  etc.) 
and  as  butchers  of  men.  Tarascan  had  its  hereditary  priests 
and  two  high  priests  served  Centeotl  among  the  Totonac. 
The  Zapotec  high  priest  was  so  charged  with  spiritual  power 
as  to  be  dangerous  to  touch  and  he  was  kept  secluded,  to 
commune  with  the  sun  and  give  out  prophecies.  The  Aztec 
priest  sometimes  served  as  a  soldier  and  originally  the  mili- 
tary and  religious  chiefs  were  one.  But  the  priest  also 
appeared  as  a  scholar,  an  ascetic,  under  rigid  discipline,  a 
teacher  of  youth,  inventor  of  a  calendar,1  often  a  celibate. 
The  idea  of  a  Supreme  God,  lacking  among  the  Aztecs, 
occurred  to  a  Nahuan,  king  of  Tezcuco,  who  died  in  1472. 
In  his  grief  he  cried,  it  is  said,  "  There  must  be  some  god  to 
console  me  " ;  but  not  finding  one  he  invented  the  "  Un- 
known god,"  to  whom,  as  "  cause  of  causes,"  he  built  a 
nine-story  temple  representing  the  ninth  heaven  of  his  Un- 
known, to  whom  he  "  sacrificed  "  only  incense  and  flowers. 
Perhaps  this  tale  is  true.  A  philosophic  interpretation  of 
divinity  may  well  be  granted  to  the  inheritors  of  Toltec  cul- 
ture. But  anyway  this  reformation  no  more  replaced  the 
old  gods  than  did  the  earlier  Egyptian  reform.  It  may  not 

1  The  Aztec  calendar  was  ruder  than  that  of  the  Mayas,  but  it 
counted  365  days  of  the  year,  of  which  the  last  five  were  un- 
lucky and  ominous.  Boys  in  college,  girls  in  convents,  were 
taught  tiM  the  age  of  fifteen.  Some  of  these  priests  were  vege- 
tarian monks,  Quaquacuiltin. 


RELIGION  OF  MEXICO  I°7 

have  been  intended  to  oust  them.  Bloody  sacrifice  and  life- 
communion  with  gods  never  ceased.  Even  the  gentle 
Quetzalcoatl,  who  was  opposed  to  human  sacrifice,  had  his 
priests  offer  him  their  own  blood.  The  resulting  idea  of  the 
cult  remained :  the  gods  need  human  blood. 

The  basis  of  this  Mexican  religion  coincides  in  many  par- 
ticulars with  that  of  the  northern  savage.  Thus  the  Four 
Directions  or  Winds  of  the  North  are  still  preserved  in  the 
serpent-cross.1  In  Mexico,  as  in  Peru,  the  intoxicating 
plant,  like  Soma,  has  become  divine  and  intoxication  to  be 
moral  must  be  religious.  The  wizard  of  the  North  and 
rarer  priest  had  become  a  priest  indeed  in  Mexico,  but  not 
yet  with  an  hereditary  priesthood,  as  in  Colombia,  where  the 
priests  evolved  a  caste-system,  like  that  in  India.  The 
tabooed  Zapotec  high-priest  (above),  became,  among  these 
Chibchas,  a  secret  ruler,  secluded  as  a  Lama.  All  the  other 
priests  formed  a  caste,  who  acted  as  Shamans,  judges,  and 
executioners.  A  second  caste  was  that  of  warriors ;  a  third, 
that  of  traders,  agriculturists,  and  craftsmen ;  the  fourth 
being  tributary  nomads.  Perhaps  the  greatest  advance 
among  the  Aztecs  is  in  the  prayer- formula.  This  prayer  at 
the  inauguration  of  an  Aztec  king  is  cited :  "  O  god,  may 
this  king  use  the  wisdom  thou  hast  given  him,  not  for  his 
own  good,  but  for  the  good  of  his  people,  and  do  thou  keep 
him  from  oppressing  us."  Another  Aztec  prayer  runs : 
"  May  thy  chastisement,  O  god,  be  that  of  a  father  or 
mother;  not  from  anger,  but  to  the  end  that  we  may  be 
freed  from  folly  and  vice."  One  never  knows,  however, 
how  much  the  European  Tenderers  of  these  prayers  are 
drawing  on  real  material.2 

1In  Yucatan  the  Roman  Church  has  converted  the  Four  into 
church-spirits,  dominating  wind  and  weather.  The  red  god  of  the 
East  is  St.  Dominic ;  the  white  god  of  the  North  is  St.  Gabriel ;  the 
black  god  of  the  West  is  St.  James;  and  the  yellow  god  of  the 
South  is  Mary  Magdalene.  In  cross-form  the  four  are  united  in 
the  Svastika  Tree  of  Life,  or  Weal,  to  whom  a  bird,  called  a  cock, 
was  offered,  as  in  Greece  to  the  healer  Aesculapius. 

2  Compare  Garcilasso's  Peruvian  prayer :  "  O  thou  who  hast 
existed  for  ever  and  shalt  exist  for  ever,  who  hast  by  thy  fiat  ere- 


108  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

The  religions  of  South  America  include  the  lowest  ani- 
mism and  the  high  worship  of  a  Cause  of  causes,  as  man 
passes  from  the  savagery  of  cannibal  tribes  living  in  tree- 
tops  to  the  culture  of  Peruvian  Amautas,  "  professors,"  and 
inventors  of  the  mnemonic  quipu,  dramatists,  architects,  and 
statesmen.  On  the  whole,  civilization  is  here  confined  to 
narrow  limits  rather  closely  connected  geographically  and  in 
touch  with  the  western  coast,  where  legend  says  that  there 
was  immigration  from  abroad.  Similarity  of  artistic  work 
and  other  indications  may  support  the  legend  that  the  west- 
ern littoral  received  its  first  culture  from  early  northern 
sources.1  The  religious  type  of  the  higher  culture  resem- 
bles that  of  the  Mayas  rather  than  that  of  the  Nahuans,  as 
the  people  are  agricultural  and  pastoral  rather  than  no- 
madic. But  it  may  be  an  independent  civilization  alto- 
gether, as  it  was  certainly  higher.  The  Mexicans  never 
conceived  the  state  founded  by  the  Incas.  Aztec  political 
power  was  that  of  a  central  tribe  extracting  forced  tribute 
from  outsiders,  not  that  of  a  great  state  civilizing  its  neigh- 
bours. 

Most  real  to  the  South  American  is  nature-worship,  not 
in  an  exalted  sense  but  in  the  sense  that  his  fears  or  hopes 
are  attached  to  natural  phenomena  by  a  belief  in  their  will 
to  work  him  ill  or  good.  The  Yurupari  noise-demon,  heard 
in  the  forest  and  deprecated,  is  an  example.  The  Brazilian 
Tupan,  whom  the  missionaries  called  their  "  God,"  is  an- 
other ;  he  is  merely  the  lightning-spirit.  To  the  Patagonian, 
stars  are  spirits ;  to  the  Araucanians,  they  are  ancestors. 
In  Brazil,  the  Botocudos  keep  away  evil  spirits  with  fire  and 
shoot  the  storm-  (or  eclipse-)  demon  with  arrows.  They 

ated  man,  be  thou  in  sky  or  earth  or  cloud  or  depth,  our  saviour, 
grant  us  life  everlasting."  Garcilasso  was  intent  on  showing  the 
Peruvians  at  their  best  and  one  cannot  avoid  thinking  that  lie  per- 
haps bettered  that  best.  But  he  may  have  been  scrupulously  cor- 
rect. Peruvian  culture  was  certainly  extraordinary. 

1  Joyce  cites  the  use  of  turquoise,  obtainable  only  from  New 
Mexico.  See  T.  A.  Joyce,  South  American  Archaeology,  London, 
1912,  pp.  188,  207.  Yet  this  source  was  not  necessary,  since  tur- 
quoise is  found  in  Chile.  See  Man,  1914,  No.  21. 


RELIGION  OF  PERU  1 09 

believe  that  the  moon  sends  them  evil,  but  the  sun  sends 
good.  Good  and  evil  spirits  are  worshipped  by  the  Arau- 
canians  also,  who  too  have  a  thunder-spirit,  like  the  thun- 
der-people of  the  North,  and  a  volcano-spirit,  as  well  as 
animal  gods. 

A  higher  culture  is  found  among  the  Colombians.  The 
Quimbayans  of  this  region  are  indeed  very  primitive,  having 
neither  a  cult  of  animals  or  of  plants,  nor  temples  nor  idols. 
But  the  Chibchas  or  Muiscans,  of  the  same  region,  like  the 
natives  of  northern  Argentina,  sacrificed  children  to  the  sun 
and  rain-god  and  had  religious  masks,  marked  with  tear- 
lines,  like  those  of  the  savages  of  Jamaica,  which  suggests 
that  "  the  fundamental  ideas  underlying  the  religions  of  a 
great  part  of  South  America  and  the  early  population  of 
the  Antilles  were  closely  akin."  *  They  had  a  cult  of  stones, 
lakes,  trees,  and  perhaps  of  ancestors  ;  but  their  earliest  gods, 
as  greater  spirits,  were  Sun  and  Thunder.  A  primitive 
recognition  of  a  Creator  has  been  asserted  for  them  and 
for  other  South  Americans;  but  it  is  not  clear  that  this  is 
another  god  than  the  tribal  progenitor,  who  is  often  a  beast 
or  a  material  object  (star  or  sun).  The  Chibchas  recog- 
nize a  culture-hero  called  Bochica,  whose  rules  were  so  strict 
that  a  cult-heroine,  Huitaca,  who  may  be  the  Moon,  taught 
in  opposition  a  religion  of  joy  and  dancing,  till  the  Creator, 
who  rarely  interferes  in  human  affairs,  turned  her  into  an 
owl.  But  she  was  still  potent  enough  to  help  the  Bogota 
god  Chibchachum  to  cause  a  deluge,  till  Bochica  appeared 
on  a  rainbow  (the  Rainbow  being  otherwise  the  goddess  of 
women)  and  opened  a  path  for  the  waters  with  his  golden 
rod.  Then  the  Creator  turned  the  Bogota  god  into  the 
giant  who  supports  earth,  and  whose  uneasy  movements 
cause  earthquakes.  The  inhabitants  of  Colombia  and  of 
Ecuador  also  worship  stones  and  snakes ;  the  snake  as  light- 
ning appears  here  as  in  the  North.  The  Chibchas  had  a 
god  of  agriculture,  whose  idol  was  wrought  gold,  a  god  of 

1  Joyce,  op.  cit.,  p.  189. 


HO  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

boundaries,  and  one  of  trade,  who  together  with  Sun,  Moon, 
Mountain,  and  Lake,  received  sacrifice.  Jewels,  men,  in- 
cense, and  fire  were  offered  to  the  Sun,  but  chiefly  children, 
as  in  Mexico.  Mexican  also  was  their  shooting-sacrifice, 
but  here  of  slaves  or  of  talking  parrots,  the  victims  repre- 
senting the  god,  so  that  his  blood  fertilized  the  land.  Idols 
and  fetishes  were  used  and  pilgrimages  to  the  sacred  lake 
caused  enmity  between  tribes  to  cease,  while  intoxication 
en  route  was  regarded  as  a  religious  rite.  So  in  Ecuador 
we  find  a  worship  of  Sun  and  Moon  as  chief  gods,  along 
with  that  of  a  war-god;  while  serpent-worship  is  connected 
with  both  lake-cult  and  hero-cult.  In  general,  cultural 
phases  were  religiously  represented.  The  mass  worshipped 
whatever  could  reasonably  be  feared  or  revered,  from  stone 
to  star.  Inland,  because  most  useful,  the  Sun  was  chief 
god;  on  the  littoral,  the  Sea  was  the  great  god,  with  the 
Moon  to  share  his  honours.  "  Sun-worship  probably  was 
not  practised  on  the  coast  before  the  Inca  conquest."  x  Hu- 
man sacrifice  was  universal  till  the  Incas  stopped  it.  On  the 
coast  the  victims  were  flayed,  as  in  Mexico. 

The  priests  of  the  savage  tribes  were  generally  men,  but 
in  Patagonia  generally  women.  At  the  worst  they  were 
Shamans  exorcising  disease  by  noise,  as  in  the  extreme  south. 
The  higher  sort  divined  (by  twitching  of  fingers,  dreams, 
cries,  etc.)  and  interceded  with  gods  by  fasting  on  hill-tops 
and  making  offerings  to  the  Sun  of  hair,2  etc.  Some  priests 
were  not  allowed  to  touch  earth  or  be  seen,  so  dangerous 
was  their  mystic  power.3  Among  Chibchas,  women  had 
great  influence  (they  might  even  beat  their  husbands),  which 
may  account  for  their  cult-heroine.  In  northern  Colom- 
bia, Antioquia,  there  was  also  a  similar  cult-heroine,  Dabe- 
ciba.  A  combination  of  agriculture,  women,  and  snakes  has 

1  Joyce,  op.  cit.  p.  66. 

2  Here  again  the  hair  is  connected  with  the  sun.    Like  the  Aztec 
priests  the  Incas  wore  their  hair  long  (this  was  their  prerogative). 

3  Compare  the  Zapotec  priest  mentioned  above  and  the  Inca,  who 
went  out  only  in  a  litter,  ostensibly  because  he  was  the  incarnate 
sun  who  is  carried  through  the  sky. 


RELIGION  OF  PERU  III 

been  noticed  among  the  Iroquois.  The  Chibcha  chiefs  were 
themselves  divine  and  appointed  the  priests  to  the  snake  and 
water-cults. 

The  sketch  just  given  resolves  half  the  mystery  that  used 
to  surround  the  religion  of  the  Incas  of  Peru,  which  was 
once  regarded  as  unique,  whereas  it  really  rested  upon  sup- 
ports common  to  the  religions  of  neighbouring  provinces 
and  got  its  strength  not  from  novelty  but  because  it  was 
racial.  Both  to  the  north  and  to  the  west,  on  the  coast, 
there  were  already  temples,  idols,  established  priesthoods, 
rituals,  pilgrimages,  and  especially  lake-worship  and  the  cult 
of  sun  (or  sea)  and  moon,  as  supreme  powers.  There  was 
also  an  acknowledgment  of  Creator-gods  superior  to  evil 
spirits,  not  to  speak  of  that  substratum  of  religion  found  all 
over  the  continent,  belief  in  the  mystic  power  of  stones,  trees, 
vegetables,  snakes,  animals,  and  fertilizing  gods  of  rain,  as 
well  as  that  material  culture  best  seen  in  Colombia  and 
Ecuador,  that  is,  inland  and  on  the  coast,  where  arts  and 
trades  flourished  before  the  Incas  came  to  Cuzco. 

As  the  Incas  cannot  be  traced  back  of  circa  1000  A.  D. 
and  as  the  Nahuans  had  overthrown  and  partly  absorbed 
"  Toltec  "  civilization  four  hundred  years  before  that,  and 
as  the  oldest  civilization  is  on  the  coast,  it  is  not  improbable 
that  Mayan  immigration  started  the  culture  known  as  Inca, 
which  it  closely  resembles.1  Even  the  solar  origin  of  the 
Incas  was  not  new.  Tunja  in  Colombia  was  ruled  by  a  king 
who  was  "  son  of  the  Sun  "  and  married  his  sister,  just  like 
the  Inca.  The  Inca  derived  from  the  Sun  through  the 
Mighty  Man,  Manco  Capac,  who  suddenly  emerged  from 
the  cave  of  Lake  Titicaca  with  the  golden  bough  planted 
later  at  Cuzco,  and  from  his  sister,  the  Moon,  called  Mama 
Ocllo  as  a  human  being,  wife  and  sister  of  the  Sun  and 

1  The  theocracy  of  the  Incas  merely  intensifies  traits  found  else- 
where. It  was  in  fact  an  aristocracy.  Only  an  Inca  might  be 
high-priest,  be  a  polygamist,  or  even  be  educated  (exceptions  occur 
with  permission  of  the  Inca).  Only  Incas  were  exempt  from 
capital  punishment.  Divine  prestige  came  from  the  idea  that  the 
army  was  the  army  of  the  (Sun)  Lord.  Cf.  Reville,  op.  cit.,  p.  124. 


112  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

patroness  of  the  arts.1  Except  (Venus)  Chasca,  who  was 
a  long-haired  male  page  of  the  Sun,  all  the  stars  (planets) 
were  servants  of  the  Moon,  while  Rainbow  was  the  servant 
of  both  gods.  Earth  and  food-producing  powers  were  es- 
pecially revered  by  the  Peruvians.2  Maize  was  a  divinity 
inland,  fish  on  the  littoral  (one  key  to  totemism).  Maize 
was  worshipped  in  the  form  of  a  figure  made  of  the  plant, 
as  was  coca,  and  adored  as  "  Mother."  The  Earth-deity 
was  propitiated  with  llama-idols  containing  food  and  was 
worshipped  in  caves.  The  people  believed  in  the  Sun-god 
before  the  Incas  came,  but  also  in  Conopas  and  Huacas, 
material  forms  of  vegetation-demons,  divine  animals,  spirit- 
stones,  etc.,  as  in  Mexico.  Especially  prominent  in  this  cult 
is  that  of  stones,  truncated  pyramids  by  preference,  repre- 
senting ancestors  perhaps,  but  probably  of  wider  bearing.3 
Any  stone,  even  if  struck  by  accident,  was  placated  with 
offerings. 

Dances  were  performed  to  the  Sun-god  at  Rimac  in  June, 
when  the  dancers  appeared  to  be  "  out  of  their  senses."  A 
girl  was  sacrificed  and  the  "  renewal  of  fire  "  performed. 
Apparently  there  is  no  trace  of  ghost-worship  in  this  great- 
est event  of  the  year.  The  dances  were  not  ghost-dances. 
To  this  agricultural  religion,  mainly  a  cult  of  earth-powers 
and  reproduction-rites,  the  invading  Incas  added  the  cult  of 
themselves  as  sons  of  the  Sun,  at  whose  temple,  as  that  of  the 
greatest  god,  were  performed  sun-rites  and  others  not  solar. 
Thus  in  September  there  was  an  apotropaic  rite,  namely  a 
public  race  in  all  directions  ending  with  a  washing-off  of 
evils.  Those  not  in  the  public  race  assisted  by  driving  off 
evils  with  torches  and  dance,  a  night-rite,  which  yet  took 
place  at  the  Sun-temple. 

!The  two  are  also  interpreted  as  primeval  male  and  cosmic  egg. 

2  The  serpent-cult  is  strongly  marked.    There  is  an  underground 
snake-god  of  concealed  treasure.    The  Inca  emblem  is  two  entwined 
snakes.     Compare  the  serpent-mother  of  the  Nahuans  and  the  ser- 
pent-cults of  North  America. 

3  The  Conopas  were  fetishes  called  "  brothers,"  images  of  animals 
and  plants  as  personal  guardians  but  also  used  as  fertility-charms, 
especially  in  llama  form. 


RELIGION  OF  PERU  113 

To  conciliate  religious  parties,  the  Incas  accepted  the  most 
popular  previous  forms  of  tribal  cult,  the  Collas'  lake-cult 
and  the  Quichua  sea-cult  on  the  littoral.  Lake  Titicaca  in 
Peru  was  as  popular  a  divinity  as  Lake  Guatabita  in  Co- 
lombia, where  a  political  centre  resulted  from  religious  pil- 
grimages to  the  lake.  In  Peru  there  was  a  local  lake 
or  water  divinity  ("  be  thou  male  or  be  thou  female,"  says 
an  old  hymn)  called  Viracocha,  probably  the  greatest  god 
before  the  Incas  came  to  Cuzco.  With  her  —  or  him  — 
was  identified  a  local  western  god  Iraya,  who,  like  a  North 
American  culture-hero,  went  disguised  as  an  animal.  Simi- 
larly, on  the  coast,  at  Rimac  (Lima)  and  Pachacamac,  there 
was  the  sea-god  of  fishes,  and  he  too  was  adopted  by  the 
Incas  as  soon  as  their  power  reached  the  sea,  though  even 
at  Pachacamac  the  Incas  built  a  sun-temple  above  the  town, 
to  show  that  the  Sun  surpassed  the  Sea  (a  legend  tells  of 
the  earlier  enmity).  Each  to  his  own  people  these  gods 
were  the  best;  the  synthesis  was  partly  political,  partly  in- 
evitable. It  resulted  in  the  god  being  no  longer  a  mere  fish- 
god,  a  mere  lake-god,  a  mere  sun-god,  but  a  god  represent- 
ing lake,  sea,  and  sun,  called  Viracocha  (of  the  lake), 
Pachacamac  (of  the  sea),  and  the  Sun  (of  the  Incas),  but 
often  called  by  two  or  all  of  these  names,  Viracocha  Pacha- 
camac.1 The  Lady  of  the  Lake  was  of  course  the  wife  of 
Viracocha  (probably  his  own  original  form,  cocha  as  lake). 
Her  temple  is  now  a  chapel  of  the  Virgin  Mary.2 

It  is  tradition  that  the  Inca  Yupanqui,  in  1440,  A.  D.,  rea- 
soned out  God  as  a  necessarily  Supreme  Being,  who  dis- 
patched the  sun  on  his  path,  daily  "  sent  like  a  servant," 

1As  Pacha-mama  is  earth-mother  so  Pacha-camac  is  earth-mover 
or  shaker  (ocean),  not  "all-mover  as  soul  of  all,"  as  Joyce  thinks. 

2  Hymns  to  iracpcha  are  given  by  Brinton,  Myths  of  the  New 
World,  Philadelphia,  1896,  p.  155,  and  Markham,  Incas  of  Peru, 
London,  1911,  p.  199.  Reville,  op.  cit.,  p.  186,  correctly  interpreted 
Viracocha  as  water-god  in  1884.  It  may  be  he  who  "  shatters  the 
water-jar"  of  the  sky.  Later  writers  have  seen  both  in  him  and  in 
Pacha-camac  original  Creators.  An  euhemeristic  legend  represents 
litholatry  as  superseded  by  the  cults  of  water  and  sun  in  turn.  It 
has  a  basis  of  truth. 


114  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

or,  as  if  without  will,  "  shot  like  an  arrow/'  No  Inca  in 
his  senses  would  have  promulgated  such  political  folly, 
for  the  Inca  power  rested  entirely  on  the  belief  that  Incas 
were  vice-gerents  of  the  highest  god,  the  Sun.  It  may  have 
been  philosophically  discussed  whether  the  sun-god  was 
under  the  orders  of  another  god  who  was  to  be  "  worshipped 
only  with  the  mind  "  ;  certainly  no  effort  was  made  to  extend 
the  worship  any  further.  It  sufficed  to  make  the  sun's  disc 
representative  of  Sun  as  Light,  Inti,  and  to  see  in  this 
Sun-Light  the  Supreme,  or  the  representative  thereof.  His 
temple  and  even  the  whole  village  faced  east.  His  divine 
spouses  were  vestal  virgins,  practically  spouses  of  the  Inca. 
All  the  great  feasts  were  in  his  honour,  though  his  sister- 
wife,  Mama  Quilla,  the  Moon  (in  human  form  known  as 
Ocllo)  was  also  revered,  as  goddess  of  weaving  and  spin- 
ning, and  minor  festivals  were  permitted  in  honour  of  her 
and  of  minor  deities,  such  as  the  Planets,  Pleiades,  and 
Rainbow,  who  had  their  special  chapels  and  cults.  The 
Rainbow  (god)  was  feared  because  he  made  dumb  those 
who  watched  him. 

As  descended  from  the  Sun,  Fire  was  greatly  revered  in 
the  mirror-form,  but  also  in  rock-form  and  volcano-form. 
The  Huacas  (above)  may  have  received  additional  rever- 
ence from  the  fact  that  the  natural  earth-home  of  the  Fire- 
god  was  in  stone.  At  the  ritual  "  renewal  of  fire,"  it  was 
brought  out  of  the  (flint)  stone  or  conducted  from  heaven 
by  means  of  a  mirror,  both  forms  being  identified.  There 
was  also  the  feeling  that  oracles  spoke  from  rocks  and 
caverns.  Rimac  itself  means  the  Murmuring  (Voice),  of 
rock  or  earth. 

But  the  Peruvians  had  still  another  great  god,  not  local- 
ized, as  were  Viracocha  and  Pachacamac,  but  not,  as  were 
they,  raised  to  universality  by  combination  with  the  Sun- 
god.  This  was  the  many-named  god  of  the  club,  stone,  and 
sling,  the  thunder  and  lightning  god  called  Illapa  (Inti- 
allapa),  whom  the  Incas  made  subordinate  to  the  Sun,  while 
they  permitted  him  to  retain  his  ancient  festival.  As  of  the 


RELIGION  OF  PERU  115 

Mexican  Tlaloc,  his  abode  was  on  the  mountains,  arid  his 
thunder-stones  were  everywhere  revered  as  potent  fer- 
tility- and  love-charms.  As  personified  Lightning,  he  was 
son  of  the  first  divine  man  and  born  a  twin ;  where- 
fore all  twins  were  sacred,  that  is,  sacrificed,  to  him.  Un- 
holy (taboo)  became  the  place  that  Lightning  struck;  men 
struck  by  him  went  underground ;  but  all  Incas  went  to  the 
Sun.  Ordinary  men,  if  worthy,  might  also  go  to  the  Sun; 
but  otherwise,  like  those  struck  by  lightning,  they  went  to 
Shadow-land,  Supay,  literally  the  Shade,  to  whom  as  a 
god  children  in  some»districts  were  sacrificed.  Their  course 
thither  was  conducted  by  a  black  dog  and  led  over  a  bridge 
of  a  hair.  Diseased  persons  had  a  special  abode  after  death 
(a  belief  of  Mexican  and  Huron  also)  ;  but  there  was  no 
place  of  punishment.  The  dead  were  buried  in  caves  or 
under  towers ;  expecting  resurrection,  according  to  Gar- 
cilasso  de  la  Vega.  A  sort  of  embalming  or  mummifica- 
tion was  practised  by  the  Peruvians  and  mummies  were 
placed  in  their  temples,  carried  in  their  processions,  and 
taken  as  fetishes  into  battle.1 

In  the  legalized  Inca  cult,  the  minor  gods  had  smaller 
temples  around  the  Sun-temple,  the  House  of  Gold  at  Cuzco. 
The  high  priest  was  the  brother  of  the  reigning  Inca ;  other 
priests  were  either  Incas  or  local  priests  of  special  gods 
who  at  the  same  time  acted  as  subordinate  Sun-priests,  like 
Levites.  As  among  the  Chibchas,  the  priesthood  was  he- 
reditary in  the  female  line.  Especial  priests  examined  ani- 
mal entrails  (haruspices)  or  divined  by  flights  of  birds 
(augur es),  maize-heaps,  spiders'  legs,  water,  and  "odd 
and  even  "  tests.  As  the  Incas  expressly  forbade  human 

1  Mummification,  sun-worship,  brother-and-sister  marriage,  and 
megalithic  temples  are  the  chief  items  emphasized  by  those  who 
derive  Peruvian  culture  and  religion  from  Egypt.  The  combination 
is  a  strong  one.  Yet,  as  we  have  seen,  megalithic  buildings  are 
found  elsewhere;  sun-worship  is  found  everywhere  (so  to  speak)  ; 
incest  is  not  local ;  and  mummification  in  Peru,  as  in  Egypt,  was 
rendered  possible  by  the  extreme  dryness  of  the  atmosphere.  Adhuc 
sub  judice  Us  est.  Another  practice  of  the  Peruvian  was  tattooing; 
but  it  is  not  necessary  to  derive  it  from  the  Pacific. 


Il6  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

sacrifice,  it  is  clear  that  it  was  a  previous  Peruvian  prac- 
tice. The  usual  "  sacrifices  "  were  vegetables,  fruits,  coca, 
and  chicha,  an  intoxicant,  which  are  offerings  used  elsewhere 
in  South  America.  On  the  coast,  headless  skeletons  (of 
women)  show  that  the  locally  prevalent  worship  of  Sea  and 
of  Moon  was  probably  not  without  its  human  toll.  In  Co- 
lombia, the  Quimbayans  sacrificed  prisoners  of  war,  as  was 
done  in  Antioquia.  The  Chibchas  regularly  set  their  terrtr- 
ple-posts  on  the  bodies  of  sacrificed  slaves.  This  savagery 
was  reduced  at  Cuzco  to  the  sacrifice  of  a  llama,  a  dog,  a 
rabbit,  or  some  other  animal,  offered  to  the  Sun  as  a  burnt 
offering  or  eaten  raw  by  the  worshippers.  Almost  the  only 
human  sacrifice  occurred  when  the  Inca  fell  ill  and  his  son 
was  sacrificed  to  save  the  father's  life,  or  when  children 
were  sacrificed  to  give  him  a  successful  reign,  or,  in  out- 
lying places,  to  make  an  offering  to  Supay.  This  was  as 
nothing  in  comparison  with  the  slaughterings  in  other  parts 
of  South  America  and  Mexico,  and  on  the  whole  it  must  be 
granted  that  the  Incas  went  far  in  mollifying  religion.1 

But  what  the  Peruvians  lacked  in  cruelty  they  made  up 
for  in  debauchery,  especially  in  drinking  and  its  attendant 
vices.  A  religious  festival  or  pilgrimage  always  ended  in 
a  drinking-bout  lasting  for  days.  Thus  the  harvest  festival 
closed  with  a  drunken  orgy.  The  festivals,  however,  also 
show  appreciation  of  asceticism.  The  most  interesting  of 
these  is  the  summer-solstice  (December)  festival,  when  the 
young  men  to  be  initiated  into  the  tribe  were  flogged,  dances 
and  races  followed,  and  men  dressed  as  animals  opposed 
women  in  a  rope-dance  with  a  four-coloured  rope  (black, 
white,  red,  and  yellow).  This  ceremony  concluded  with  the 
piercing  of  the  ears  of  the  youths,  prayer  (ejaculations),  and 

1  Voluntary  suttee  was  permitted  to  wives,  especially  to  those  of 
the  Incas-  but  sometimes  images  were  substituted  for  the  real  vic- 
tims. The  vestal  virgins  of  the  Sun  were  actually  virgins  only 
till  their  marriage  with  the  Sun  represented  by  the  Inca;  but  if 
untrue  to  their  vows,  they  were  buried  alive,  like  Roman  vestals. 
If  worthy,  they  received  civic  and  religious  honours,  especial  escort, 
etc.  There  were  3000  of  these  "  Elect  of  the  Sun  "  at  Cuzco  alone. 


RELIGION  OF  PERU 

sacrifice.  The  winter-solstice  festival  (in  June)  was  de- 
voted to  adoration  of  the  Sun,  preceded  by  fasting  and  fol- 
lowed by  a  Saturnalia  of  debauchery.  One  has  but  to  com- 
pare Colombian  custom  to  see  that  all  these  popular  festi- 
vals were  racial  rather  than  national.  Thus  at  Tunja  there 
was  a  year-end  festival  in  which  twelve  men,  representing 
months,  in  red,  sang  a  death-song  around  a  man  in  blue 
(black).  In  the  Bogota  harvest  festival,  men  dressed  in 
animal  skins  had  a  sun-celebration  with  prayer  and  the  use 
of  masks.  The  elements  of  all  celebrations  were  races, 
games,  intoxication,  and  licentious  carousing.  Savagery  as 
cruelty  appears  chiefly  in  agricultural  (fertility)  rites,  as 
when  in  Ecuador  human  sacrifice  took  place  at  the  annual 
sowing,  and  then  it  is  obviously  a  logical  piece  of  sympa- 
thetic magic.  There  is  scarcely  any  recognition  of  spirits 
naturally  evil.  The  northern  Tamahi  of  Antioquia  in  Co- 
lombia had  an  evil  deity,  Canicuba,  besides  a  good  deity 
as  creator,  Abina,  but  neither  was  worshipped.  These  peo- 
ple were  chiefly  agriculturists  and  developed  great  advance 
in  weaving  and  dyeing,  feminine  influence  prevailing. 

An  interesting  question  arises  in  regard  to  the  identifica- 
tion of  man  and  god  in  these  southern  tribes.  Bochica  of 
the  Chibchas  was  a  cult-man  who,  like  Quetzalcoatl,  finally 
disappears,  here  "  to  the  east,"  and  then  is  worshipped  as  a 
god ;  his  footstep  is  still  visible  on  a  rock.  His  laws  were 
codified  by  the  earliest  historical  chief,  Nompanem  of 
Irica;  his  sister,  who  ruled  next,  was  followed  by  a  chief 
called  Idacansas,  who  had  power  over  diseases  and  the  ele- 
ments and  thus  started  a  cult  marked  by  pilgrimages  which 
practically  made  him  a  god,  or,  at  least,  a  divine  priest. 
Here  we  have  not  a  priest  as  chief  but  a  chief  as  priest. 
At  Tunja  also,  two  chiefs  became  Sun  and  Moon  and  were 
duly  celebrated.  Another  chief  here  had  a  tail  and  four 
ears  and  had  from  the  sun  the  power  to  metamorphose 
animals  and  men,  virtually  a  divinity  of  a  sort.  Probably 
the  Inca  chief  also  did  not  assume  political  command  as 
priest,  but  as  chief,  and  then,  as  Sun's  son,  assumed  priest- 


Il8  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

hood.     This  is  certainly  the  case  in  the  North,  where  no 
priest  qua  priest  becomes  a  sachem.1 

The  ethical  content  of  American  religions  is  distinctly 
higher  than  that  of  the  religions  hitherto  examined.  Clan- 
morality  is  everywhere  strict  and  often  involves  other  clans. 
That  is,  truth  between  tribes,  as  in  treaties,  was  observed, 
though  of  course  it  was  usually  a  virtue  to  deceive,  despoil 
and  murder  others.  A  certain  connexion  between  ethics 
and  spirits  is  observable  in  the  implicit  assumption  that  the 
tutelary  spirits  are  present  when  conferences  take  place; 
but  most  of  the  tutelary  spirits  and  culture-creatures  are 
themselves  famous  for  their  knavery.  In  Mexico  the  mir- 
ror-god sees  the  sinner ;  but  there  is  no  close  connexion  be- 
tween god  and  good.  Baptism  or  ablution  is  to  get  rid  of 
ills  rather  than  of  sin.  The  fast  is  recognized  as  a  means 
of  "  purity  "  of  the  same  sort.  Before  a  Peruvian  pilgrim 
might  enter  the  god's  temple  at  Pachacamac  he  had  to  fast 
for  twenty  days ;  but  this  was  to  make  certain,  by  a  sort  of 
quarantine,  that  he  did  not  pollute  the  temple  with  bad  in- 
fluence. The  Incas  had  a  system  of  "  confession,"  but  it 
was  not  religious.  The  inquisitors  were  church-police  in 
the  service  of  the  system,  which  utterly  destroyed  individ- 
uality and  private  initiative.  They  decided  whether  each 
individual  who  came  up  for  confession  had  withheld  any- 
thing the  church-and-state  ought  to  know.  The  hereafter 
was  not  morally  conditioned ;  there  was  no  ethical  balance  to 
be  struck  beyond  the  grave ;  though  there  was  doubtless  the 
feeling  in  Peru,  Mexico,  and  Bogota  that  the  highest  gods 
were  morally  higher  than  the  demons  who  plagued  men 
from  below  earth.  But  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  hymns  to 
the  Sun  and  to  Viracocha  express  only  the  worshipper's  awe 
without  any  ethical  implication.  Communion  with  the  god, 
by  eating  him,  or  his  image,  or  his  victim,  or,  as  in  Peru, 

1The  general  derivation  of  kingly  power  from  priestly  power 
seems  to  rest  on  a  misapprehension.  Every  king,  as  pater  familias, 
is,  like  a  father,  at  once  head  of  earthly  and  heavenly  affairs  for 
his  family ;  but  he  does  not  become  father  by  being  priest. 


RELIGION  OF  PERU  1 19 

by  snaring  a  drink  with  him,  had  the  purpose  of  physically 
strengthening  the  communicant,  that  is,  it  was  religious  with- 
out being  moral. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

W.  H.  Prescott,  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico,  Philadel- 
phia, 1846,  and  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Peru,  Phila- 
delphia, 1846-71. 

A.  Reville,  Religions  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  Hibbert  Lectures  for 
1884. 

Sir  C.  R.  Markham,  A  History  of  Peru,  Chicago,  1892;  Gar- 
cilasso  de  la  Vega,  in  Commentaries  on  the  Yncas,  trans- 
lated, London,  1869-71;  The  Incas  of  Peru,  London,  1911. 

T.  A.  Joyce,  Mexican  Archaeology,  London,  1914;  South 
American  Archaeology,  London,  1912. 

R.  B.  Brehm,  Das  Inkareich,  Jena.  1885. 

D.  G.  Brinton,  American  Hero  Myths,  Philadelphia,  1882. 

S.  G.  Morley,  Bulletin  57,  1915,  of  Bureau  of  American  Eth- 
nology. 


CHAPTER  EIGHT 

RELIGION   OF  THE   CELTS 

IN  the  last  chapter  we  passed  far  beyond  the  confines  of 
Savage  Religions  and  reached  a  plane  even  higher  than  that 
upon  which  we  are  now  to  enter,  the  religions  of  certain 
barbarians,  midway  between  savagery  and  civilization, 
namely,  the  inhabitants  of  northern  Europe,  from  the  time 
of  the  Christian  era  to  that  of  the  Middle  Ages,  almost 
synchronous  with  the  more  advanced  types  of  South  Amer- 
ica. Although  these  barbarians  are  linguistically  connected 
with  the  higher  Mediterranean  group  represented  by  Greeks 
and  Romans,  they  are  religiously  distinct,  since  from  the 
earliest  historical  period  the  inhabitants  of  Greece  and  Italy 
had  been  profoundly  affected  by  the  far  older  cultures  of 
the  Mediterranean  littoral  and  of  Mesopotamia.  It  will  be 
necessary  therefore  to  ignore  whatever  Aryan  unity  may 
once  have  bound  together  Greek-Roman  and  German-Celt 
and  treat  separately  the  two  divisions  of  northern  and  south- 
ern Europe. 

To  the  northern  division  Celtic  religion  serves  as  the  best 
introduction,  because  much  of  what  the  Celt  believed  was 
once  the  general  belief  of  Europe.  When  the  Aryan-speak- 
ing peoples  spread  from  eastern  Europe  southward  and 
westward,  they  took  as  their  own  the  land  and  religion  of 
the  prehistoric  natives,  giving  them  in  exchange  a  new  lan- 
guage and  a  new  culture,  partly  that  belonging  by  inheritance 
to  themselves,  partly  that  which  they  had  absorbed  from 
Scythia  and  elsewhere,  on  their  long  migration.  Thus  the 
mixed  inhabitants  of  future  Gaul,  France,  Spain,  Northern 
Italy,  and  Great  Britain  had  thereafter  a  religion  combined 
of  indigenous  and  imported  elements.  In  the  course  of  two 

120 


CELTIC  RELIGION  121 

thousand  years  of  westward  progression  the  Aryan  factor 
must  have  become  a  thin  stream  irrigating  the  vast  field 
into  which  it  emptied  (much  as  the  Aryan  element  thinned 
out  as  it  flowed  into  India),  a  field  which  had  its  own  reli- 
gious springs,  indicated  by  the  survival  of  monuments  still 
marking  their  former  activity,  the  trepanned  skull,  the  exit- 
hole  in  the  cromlech  (from  which  graves  the  soul  might 
crawl),  the  toys  and  implements  found  in  graves,  menhirs, 
and  perhaps  the  pictured  magic  of  immemorial  caves. 

Such  vague  indications  of  religious  belief  reach  far  back 
of  the  entry  of  the  Celts  into  western  Europe.  Perhaps 
about  2000  B.  c.,  the  Celts,  an  offshoot  of  the  eastern  Aryan- 
speaking  tribes,  between  the  Carpathians  and  the  Steppe, 
then  located  about  the  Danube,  began  to  migrate  further 
west  and  south.  One  branch  invaded  Asia  Minor  and 
Greece.  Another  streamed  south-west  through  the  Tyrol 
and  settled  in  Italy.1  A  third  spread  over  Gaul  about  800 
B.  c.,  Spain  about  500  B.  c.,  and  at  the  same  time,  extending 
northward,  invaded  Britain,  first  about  500  B.  c.,  and  then 
again  about  300  B.  c.  Of  these  two  northward  streams,  the 
first  became  the  Gaelic  (Goidelic)  or  Irish  Celts;  the  sec- 
ond, the  Cymrics,  Britains,  and  Belgians.2  These  two  sub- 
divisions stood  to  each  other  linguistically  as  the  Romans 
stood  to  the  Oscans,  Volsci,  and  Umbrians,  the  Gaelic  divi- 
sion pronouncing  a  q  where  the  British-Belgian  said  p,  and 
u  where  the  latter  said  u.  The  older  pronunciation  is  that 
of  Roman  and  Gaelic  (compare  Ionian  k  with  Attic  p), 
as  contrasted  with  that  of  Volsci  and  British.  In  fact,  the 
Volsci  and  Welsh  (compare  the  Volcae  tribe  of  Southern 
Gaul)  may  once  have  been  "  Hawks,"  as  the  name  perhaps 
means,  of  the  same  stock  with  the  same  name. 

In  modern  terms,  the  Irish  preceded  the  British  by  sev- 

1  Probably   from  this   Celtic   stock  came  Vergil,   Catullus,   Livy, 
and  other  "  Romans,"  whose  families  originated  in  the  province  of 
northern  Italy.    Vergil's  spirit  is  more  Celtic  than  Roman. 

2  Tacitus  distinguishes  the  red-headed  northern  Caledonians,  who 
were  like  Germans,  from  the  swarthy  Spanish-like  Welsh  and  the 
Southerners,  who  resembled  Gauls  and  Belgians   (Agricola,  c.  xi; 


122  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

eral  centuries  and  were  pushed  west  by  the  later  wave  of 
immigration,  which  had  perhaps  come  more  directly  from 
the  Rhine  and  other  eastern  parts  of  Celt-land.  The  longer 
acclimatization  of  the  Gaelic  Celts  would  have  resulted  in  a 
closer  contact  with  the  primitive  European  stock  and  may 
account  for  some  of  their  religious  characteristics.  The 
later  British,  represented  now  by  Welsh  and  Cornish,  en- 
tered Britain  about  the  time  iron  was  introduced  there,  circa 
300  B.  c.,  a  thousand  years  after  England's  Bronze  Age  be- 
gan. By  this  time  the  Celts  of  Gaul  had  already  come  into 
contact  with  the  civilization  lying  south  (south-east)  of 
them  through  commercial  routes  which  had  been  followed 
for  centuries.  In  fact,  remains  in  Ireland  show,  as  early 
as  the  Bronze  Age,  influences  which  have  been  described 
as  "  ^Egean,  Scandinavian,  and  Iberian."  1  Such  contact, 
at  least  that  of  later  days,  tended  to  civilize  them  but  also 
to  undermine  their  native  virtue  and  religious  belief.  By 
the  time  Caesar  came  directly  in  touch  with  them,  the  most 
popular  god  of  the  Gauls  was  no  longer  a  warrior's  god  but 
the  god  of  arts  and  journeys  ("Mercury,"  thus  defined). 
Incidentally  Caesar  informs  us  that  the  Gauls  were  very  re- 
ligious and  believed  that  all  things  happened  by  divine  will. 
He  tells  us,  too,  more  specifically  that  they  worshipped  heal- 
ing gods  like  Apollo  and  three  great  gods,  whom  he  identi- 
fies with  Mars,  Jupiter,  and  Minerva;  also,  that  they  derived 
their  origin  from  Dis  Pater. 

Modern  scholarship  has  been  inclined  to  ignore  the  im- 
portance of  such  statements  in  favour  of  the  a  priori  view 
that  all  higher  gods  are  secondary  creations.  To  get  to  the 
bed-rock  of  Celtic  religion  we  must  remove  the  upper  layers. 
This  assumes  what  is  upper.  Historically  the  great  gods 
are  as  old  as  any  we  know  in  possession  of  the  Celts.  If 
they  agree  rather  well  with  phenomena  common  to  other 

compare  Caesar,  B.  G.  v.  12).    The  Gauls  were  of  the  same  linguistic 
stock  as  the  British,  sermo  haud  multum  diyersus;  but  had  become 
lazy  and  were  less  war-like,  segnitia  cum  otio. 
1  See  The  Bronze  Age  in  Ireland,  by  G.  Coffey,  London,  1913. 


CELTIC  RELIGION  123 

branches  of  the  same  stock,  it  is  reasonable  to  conclude,  not 
that  high  gods  come  before  others,  but  that  the  Celts  may 
have  brought  high  gods  with  them.  Little  localized  spirits 
stay  behind  when  a  people  migrates  ;  when  resettled,  the  same 
people  picks  up  new  ones  off  the  ground  where  they  grow. 

Of  course,  a  Roman  would  be  apt  to  make  mistakes  in 
describing  outlandish  gods.  Some  of  the  Celtic  gods  de- 
scribed as  "  Jupiters  "  have  a  disc,  some  a  hammer  or  bolt. 
In  identifying  all  these  gods  there  is  a  good  deal  of  uncer- 
tainty. Nor  need  we  lay  too  much  weight  on  etymological 
equations.  Yet  some  of  these,  approved  by  recognized  Celtic 
scholars,  are,  if  certain,  instructive  as  well  as  interesting. 

The  father  of  Ossian  (Ossain)  was  Finn,1  who  in  turn  is 
son  of  Cumhal,  Irish  for  (the  god)  Camulos,  whose  name 
lingers  in  Colchester  (of  old,  Camulodunum),  and  the  word 
camulos  appears  to  mean  sky,  etymologically  equal  to  Ger- 
man himmel.  Euhemerized  gods  are  a  feature  of  Irish 
mythology  and  there  is  nothing  strange  anywhere  in  the  re- 
duction of  a  god  to  an  historical  hero  (the  Persian  epic  is 
built  upon  such  heroes).  Thor  and  Donar  again  may  ap- 
pear in  Celtic  Taranis  or  Taranacos,  a  thunder-god.  But 
apart  from  the  slippery  ground  of  linguistics  there  is  toler- 
able certainty  that  Belenos  and  Sulis  represent  sun-god  and 
sun-goddess,  respectively  (Belenos  of  Gaul,  worshipped  by 
the  Druids,  becomes  in  the  Morte  D' Arthur  a  mere  king). 
Then  there  is  a  Vintius,  probably  a  Wind-god,  though  called 
Mars.  Lucetius  is  a  light-god,  perhaps  lightning.  The 
Mars  of  the  British  called  "war-brilliant"  (Belatucadros) 
shows  no  sign  of  elevation  from  a  low-down  "  spirit  of  fer- 
tility." What  shall  we  say,  too,  of  gods  named  "  the  all- 
wise,"  "he  of  brilliant  energy,"  "the  enduring"  (persist- 
ent), dubbed  by  the  Romans  Mars  or  Jupiter?  The  gods 
called  "  the  highest "  and  "  thunderer  "  are  at  least  as  old  as 
any  Celtic  gods  we  know.2 

iHe  corresponds  to  a  British  fertility-god,  Gwyn  ab  Nudd,  and 
the  Welsh  king  of  fairies. 
2  Ollovidios,  "  all-knowing,"  is  called  a  Mars ;  Ambisagros,  "  en- 


124  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  Celts  and  Romans  con- 
sorted together,  before  becoming  "  Celts  "  and  "  Romans," 
for  a  long  period.  They  have  one  or  two  grammatical  forms 
not  shared  by  other  Aryans  and  indicating  a  closer  connec- 
tion than  that  between  Roman  (Italic)  and  German  or 
Slavic.  Roman  and  Celt  had  much  in  common  otherwise. 
Both  were  war-like,  yet  both  from  their  earliest  history  were 
agricultural.  Ambactonos  was  a  very  venerable  Celtic  god 
of  farming.  But  there  was  no  farmer-caste.  When  a  Bel- 
gian warrior  stopped  fighting  he  returned  to  the  plough. 
The  Celts,  too,  as  well  as  the  Gauls,  had  been  expert  metal- 
workers for  centuries  before  Caesar  invaded  Britain  (in 
55  B.C.).1  Both  worshipped  trade-gods  and  smith-gods, 
sometimes  under  the  form  of  fire-gods,  who  patronized  arts 
and  represented  recondite  wisdom.  As  sundry  Celts  de- 
rived through  the  mother  (matrilinear),  they  naturally 
made  much  of  goddesses  and  had  Mother  and  Queen  divini- 
ties, such  as  "Diana"  (so  named  by  Romans)  and  the 
"  Ops  "  called  Rosmerta,  who  represented  nature-power  and 
productivity,  not  as  mere  spirits  but  as  high  Powers.  There 
is  also  a  Mother  of  the  Gods,  Anu  or  Ana,  perhaps  equiva^- 
lent  to  the  Gaelic  Danu,  Mother  of  Light-gods  (below). 
How  many  Celtic  gods  were  raised  to  godhead  from  man's 
estate  we  do  not  know.  Some  gods  may  once  have  been 

during,"  a  Jupiter.  lovanucaros,  "  lover  of  youth,"  is  a  god  paired 
with  Mercury,  who  is  also  "the  wise,"  Visucios.  The  water-god 
Bedaios  is  also  called  a  Jupiter.  These  various  Jupiters,  etc.,  are 
probably  expressions  of  belief  in  a  general  sun-god  and  god  of 
weather  ramifying  into  sky,  thunder,  light,  etc.,  embodied  with  a 
local  clan-god  and  healing-god.  They  are  chiefly  of  Gaul.  The 
"all-wise"  (etc.)  gods  are  epithets  individualized  as  separate 
persons. 

1  Britain  became  a  Roman  province  in  43  A.  D.  It  was  aban- 
doned in  410  A.  D.,  by  which  time  trade-route  culture,  which  had 
existed  long  before,  had  been  largely  reinforced  by  direct  contact 
with  the  Romans,  whose  own  religion  had  previously  been  Hel- 
lenized  and  Orientalized.  Traces  of  Oriental-Roman  cult  remained 
in  Britain  long  after  the  Romans  withdrew.  Even  in  Tacitus's  time, 
the  better  British  of  the  south  of  England  dressed  like  Romans, 
spoke  Latin,  and  were  building  forums  and  baths. 


CELTIC  RELIGION  12$ 

human.     One  of  the  leaders  of  the  Boii  was  "  deified  "  after 
death. 

It  is  therefore  impossible  to  see  primitive  Celtic  only  in 
the  much  later  tales  of  giants,  fairies,  and  magicians  in 
Ireland  and  Britain,  tales  which,  were  they  primitive,  would 
still  be  of  doubtful  interpretation.  If  we  seek  as  indicative 
of  Celtic  character  the  most  wide-spread  phenomena,  they 
are  the  worship  of  a  few  great  gods  over  a  wide  area,1  the 
employment  of  magic,  the  influence  of  the  priesthood,  and 
a  general  but  localized  belief  in  special  terrestrial  divinities, 
silvani,  animals,  rivers,2  springs,  etc.  In  Gaul  and  lower 
Germany  the  cult  of  Mothers,  generally  a  Mother  in  three 
forms,  is  prominent,  which  in  the  British  Islands  becomes 
a  belief  in  fairies.  Groups  rather  than  individuals  are  often 
honoured,  or  feared,  like  the  Dusii,  evil  spirits  plaguing 
women,  as  elsewhere  ghosts  and  storm-spirits  are  wont  to 
be  honoured  en  masse  rather  than  by  individual  names. 
Honour  was  paid  not  usually  in  temples  but  in  groves, 
nameton,  although  Celtic  temples  were  not  unknown  on  the 
Continent  and  idols  were  common  in  the  case  of  individual 
gods,  such  as  the  three  mentioned  by  Lucan  as  Teutates, 
Esus,  and  Taranis,  who  were  individually  worshipped  with 
bloody  sacrifices.  Of  these,  Teutates  is  possibly  a  tribal 
god,  whose  name  suggests,  what  is  otherwise  suspected,  that 
Teutonic  and  Celtic  elements  combine  in  many  "  Celtic " 
phenomena.  Taranis  (above)  is  the  Mars  or  Jupiter  of 
thunder.  Esus  is  the  tribal  god  of  the  Essuvii  (in  France; 
"  interpreted  "  as  a  solar  or  a  vegetation-spirit)  ;  his  name 
appears  to  be  one  with  that  of  certain  Irish  divinities  (Aes). 
A  British  culture-hero  of  local  fame,  Gwydion,3  though  it 
is  not  certain  that  he  is  Woden,  yet  agrees  remarkably  well 

1  Such  as  Lug  in  England  and  France,  Ogma  in  Ireland,  Gaulic 
Ogmius,  and  Epona  (equa),  the  goddess  of  horses. 

2  Such  as  the  Dee   (Deva,  goddess)  ;   Sequana   (goddess  of)   the 
Seine;    Belisama,    "most    warlike,"    goddess    of   the   Mersey.    The 
river  itself  was  the  local  deity. 

3  Gwydion's   Castle  in  the   Milky  Way    (in  the  star-cult  of  the 
Welsh),  which,  however,  is  also  "Lug's  Chain." 


126  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

with  the  Germanic  god  in  name  and  characteristics,  as  both 
were  distinguished  for  war,  poetry,  magic,  and  the  ability 
to  raise  up  men  from  vegetable  growths.  Mabon,  of  the 
Arthur  legend,  is  one  with  Mapories,  the  "  great  youth  " 
form  of  that  medicinal  "  Apollo  "  revered  as  a  god  of  heal- 
ing springs  under  the  name  Borvo  (Bourbon),  the  "  boiler." 
Other  such  Apollos  are  Moguns,  whose  name  survives  in 
Mainz  (Moguntiacum),  and  Grannus,  the  Apollo  of  Aix-la- 
Chapelle,  who  is  paired  with  "  long-lived  "  Sirona,  an  earth- 
goddess,  as  Silvanus  is  paired  with  Silvana,  and  Borvo  with 
the  probably  animal-spirit  Damona. 

The  last  named  deity,  like  the  Epona  already  mentioned, 
shows  that  animal-worship  was  wide-spread  among  the 
Celts,  who  wore  skins  and  engraved  images  of  the  boar  and 
serpent ;  but  the  bearing  of  these  facts  is  by  no  means  cer- 
tain. They  do  not  prove,  as  has  been  supposed,  that  the 
Celts  were  totemists,  nor  is  this  proved  by  the  further  fact, 
mentioned  by  Caesar,  that  the  Celts  did  not  eat  the  hen, 
goose,  and  hare,  although  they  kept  them  as  domestic  ani- 
mals. The  hare,  for  example,  was  used  in  Britain  for  divi- 
nation, which  might  have  secured  its  inviolability  as  an 
article  of  food.  The  goose  may  have  been  sacred,  as  in  In- 
dia, through  evincing  a  heavenly  nature  by  its  lofty  flight. 
Caesar  does  not  mention  as  taboo  the  pig,  which  some  Celts 
will  not  eat.  This  may  have  been  divine  either  as  a  fight- 
ing-animal, the  wild  boar,  or  as  a  rooting  animal  sacred  to 
under-world  deities.  Its  love  of  acorns  alone  would  make 
it  perhaps  sacred  to  the  oak-tree  revered  by  the  Tree-priests 
(Druids).  Many  of  the  divine  animals  or  deities  of  ani- 
mals are  unexplained  or  even  doubtful  in  meaning.  Tarvos, 
the  bull,1  and  Moccus  (the  boar?)  and  even  Mullo  (the 

1The  Tarbfess  was  an  Irish  (Ulster)  tauric  festival  or  "bull- 
feast,"  in  which  a  man  ate  of  a  slaughtered  white  ox  and  then, 
gorged,  slept  and  dreamed,  while  four  Druids  repeated  magical 
verses.  The  man  the  sleeper  saw  in  his  dream  was  then  made  king 
of  Ireland,  Windisch,  Irische  Texie,  Leipzig,  1880,  p.  200.  This 
shows  a  lingering  divinity  in  the  bull,  as  well  as  a  lingering  (magi- 
cian's) power  in  the  Druid. 


CELTIC  RELIGION  127 

ass?)  are  probably  deities  or  sacred  animals,  the  last  per- 
haps as  a  war-animal,  like  March,  the  horse  of  war  (com- 
pare Mars).1  Snakes  were  burned  at  the  summer  festival, 
but  the  horned  serpent  seems  to  be  revered.  Artio  of  Bern 
is  either  the  local  bear-goddess,  like  Artemis,  or  a  culture- 
goddess  (from  ar,  to  plough,  daringly  supposed  by  some 
scholars  to  be  related  to  King  Ar-thur).  The  raven  was 
sacred ;  the  crow  was  regarded  as  a  prophetic,  but  not  per- 
haps as  a  divine  bird.  Yet  in  this  whole  domain  of  animal- 
worship  there  still  remains  more  dubiosity  than  certainty. 

Like  the  Romans  and  their  neighbours,  the  Celts  laid  great 
weight  on  the  flight  of  birds  and  course  of  animals  for  pur- 
poses of  divination,  and  snakes  were  used  for  the  same  pur- 
pose. Further  they  observed  celestial  phenomena  and  em- 
ployed yew-rods  to  the  same  end ;  but  both  the  other  priests 
or  soothsayers,  vaies  to  the  Roman,  and  the  Druids  ex- 
amined with  special  care  the  entrails  of  animals  slain  for 
this  purpose  and  the  nature  of  the  blood. 

Such  divination  was  but  part  of  the  priestly  duties  of  the 
Druids,  whose  r6le  as  philosophers  and  prophets  was,  how- 
ever, probably  much  exaggerated  by  classical  writers. 
Druidic  "  philosophy "  consisted  in  magic  and  a  belief  in 
metempsychosis;  they  conducted  the  barbarously  cruel  sac- 
rifices of  the  gods  of  clan  and  war  and  agriculture,  consist- 
ing in  burning  human  victims  in  wicker  cages.  It  was  their 
duty  also  to  save  the  "  soul  of  the  oak  "  by  amputating  its 
mistletoe  with  a  golden  knife  in  moonlight ;  and  distil  from 
it  a  curative  drink. 

The  priests  formed  no  caste  but  were  chosen  from  the 
youths  of  the  people  and  elected  their  own  chief.  In  Ire- 
land they  superintended  the  selection  of  a  king.  As  prophets, 
they  chewed  acorns  for  inspiration  and  their  sacred  oak  was 
a  parallel  to  that  of  Dodona,  whose  leaves  also  gave  oracles.2 

iMoccus  appears  to  mean  boar  (pig),  but  is  called  a  Mercury 
by  the  Romans,  as  Mullo  is  called  a  Mars. 

2  A  Gallic  invasion  may  have  taken  place  in  Greece.  In  Asia 
Minor  there  were  Gauls  whose  centre  of  worship  was  Dru-nemeton 
(Oak-grove). 


128  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

They  acted  as  political  representatives  of  the  people  and 
after  Caesar's  time  adopted  distinctions  of  rank  of  which 
he  says  nothing.  It  is  questionable  whether  the  Druids  had 
everywhere  the  like  authority.  Their  Gallic  centre  of  influ- 
ence was  Carnutum  (Chartres),  but  they  had  also  a  British 
centre.  That  the  Druids  were  not  Celtic  but  a  primitive 
priesthood  disliked  by  the  Celtic  aristocrats  is  an  hypothesis 
based  on  the  belief  that  these  aristocrats  were  "  Aryan " 
and  that  the  Druids  were  pre- Aryan  magicians.  They  would 
thus  belong  to  the  religious  stratum  represented  by  the  cult 
of  rocks,  trees,  streams,  and  other  objects  of  earth,  as  op- 
posed to  the  Aryan  element  represented  by  the  cult  of  sun 
and  fire.  But  in  Gaul  they  were  certainly  much  more  than 
the  magicians  of  a  despised  primitive  culture.  The  privi- 
leges of  this  priesthood  consisted  in  exemption  from  duties 
of  war  and  tribute ;  the  right  to  punish  offenders  and  even  to 
ostracize  recalcitrants.  Their  office  made  them  the  educators 
of  the  young,  who  were  trained  to  memorize  verses  contain- 
ing their  sacred  lore.  They  appear  thus,  especially  as  this 
education  is  said  to  have  sometimes  taken  twenty  years,  in  the 
light  of  Brahmans  committing  their  sacred  knowledge  year 
after  year  to  other  Aryan  aristocrats,  chiefly  of  the  warrior 
caste.  In  another  point  also  they  resemble  the  Brahmans, 
namely  in  the  feud  between  them  and  the  Celtic  nobles. 
This  led  them  to  take  sides  with  Caesar  against  their  own 
knights.  It  was  political  and  not  religious  intolerance  which 
subsequently  led  to  their  overthrow,  when  the  knights  had 
made  themselves  Roman  favourites.  Then  the  Druids  in- 
flamed the  national  hatred  against  the  Roman  conquerors, 
who,  however,  not  only  reduced  the  Druids  but  also  put  an 
end  to  their  "  savage  sacrifices."  Classical  writers  sometimes 
distinguish  between  the  Druids  and  prophets  and  poets  or 
bards,  as  Caesar,  who  knew  them  first,  does  not.  Probably 
the  immolation  of  victims  was  performed  by  other  priests 
(we  know  that  other  priests  existed),  and  the  bards  may 
have  been  a  class  apart,  or,  like  the  Irish  poets,  bards  and 


CELTIC  RELIGION  1 29 

magicians  both,  while  diviners  or  seers  were  sometimes 
Druids  and  sometimes  not.  It  is  clear  that  the  Druids,  as 
the  only  organized  priesthood,  had  charge  of  laws,  human 
and  divine,  and  that  they  arbitrated  disputes  and  awarded 
penalties,  exactly  as  did  the  early  Roman  priesthood.  Per- 
mitted to  excommunicate  any  member  of  the  tribe,  they 
were  able  to  cut  off  any  one  who  offended  them  from  all 
social  intercourse.  They  held  court  once  a  year  in  what 
was  regarded  as  the  centre  of  Gaul  (Carnutum).  They 
were  acquainted  with  Greek  letters  but  refused  to  commit 
their  own  wisdom  to  writing  (exactly  like  the  Brahmans). 
Their  teaching  in  Caesar's  time  embraced  the  subjects  of 
immortality,  astrology,  the  extent  and  nature  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  the  power  of  the  immortal  gods.  This  last  item 
shows  that  they  worshipped  greater  gods  than  the  earth- 
spirits.  Their  religious  wisdom  expounded  the  doctrine  of 
immortality,  and  taught  an  eschatology  summed  up  in  the 
words  that  "  Fire  and  Water  will  prevail,"  to  end  the 
world  in  a  cataclysm.  By  the  middle  of  the  first  century 
A.  D.  their  power  had  been  broken.  In  Ireland  the  word 
corresponding  to  Druid  meant  no  more  than  a  magician  fa- 
mous for  malediction.  In  Britain  and  elsewhere  there  were 
later  priestesses,  as  well  as  priests,  corresponding  to  the 
Great  Mother  and  Great  Queen  divinities,  as  well  as  to  the 
groups  of  female  spirits,  such  as  the  oak-spirits,  Dervonnae, 
the  water-spirits,  Niskai,  and  the  goddesses  of  cross-roads,1 
not  yet  individualized. 

The  festivals  reveal  little  outside  of  the  common  (Eu- 
ropean) sun-,  summer-,  and  harvest-rites  of  fertility  and 
lustration,  but  they  show  a  worship  of  the  sun-god  recog- 
nized by  name  also.  At  mid-summer  and  the  "  bright  fire  " 
(Beltane)  festival  of  May-day,  cattle  were  driven  through 
fires  and  a  deasil  dance  ("with  the  sun")  formed  part  of 

i  Compare  Welsh  Rigantona,  Great  Queen  (goddess)  with  Albi- 
orix,  world-king,  Caturix,  Battle-king,  and  other  great  gods  known 
only  by  such  titles  but  identified  as  Mars  by  the  Romans.  Some  of 
the  grouped  goddesses  may  be  Teutonic  rather  than  Celtic. 


130  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  ritual.  At  Samhain,  or  New  Year's,  Oct.  3I,1  the  har- 
vest festival,  lasting  a  week,  with  its  new  fire  from  the  old, 
its  savagery  and  licentious  Saturnalia,  reveals  a  cult  of 
weapons  and  of  the  dead,  the  avoidance  of  evil  spirits,  in- 
jurious to  animals  and  crops,  perhaps,  too,  the  cult  of  the 
Maiden,  as  in  Greece,  a  spirit  of  vegetation  in  female  form. 
Between  these  festivals  came  the  feast  of  the  sun-god  Lug 
(cf.  Lyons),  celebrated  with  horse-races,  and  the  driving 
of  cattle  through  water.  Its  autumnal  character  would  be 
associated  with  the  decline  of  the  sun  and  decay  of  fer- 
tility.2 

Probably  connected  with  some  such  spirit  of  fertility,  mag- 
nified into  Mother  Earth,  come  the  teachings,  vague  as  they 
are,  concerning  the  fate  of  man  hereafter.  The  Celt  has  al- 
ways loved  the  earth;  even  his  other-world  was  terrestrial. 
The  fertile  Mother,  who  is  also  mother  of  all  the  lesser 
spirits  of  field  and  spring,  is  his  Mother  (goddess)  also. 
There  is  no  idea  that  men  were  created ;  they  descended  or 
ascended  from  Earth,  whose  consort  is  the  Dis  Pater  recog- 
nized by  Caesar,  perhaps  the  god  represented  as  armed 
with  hammer  and  cup,  symbols  of  fertility,  and  like  the  sun- 
god,  wearing  three  horns.  The  hammer  and  ax  were  them- 
selves worshipped  in  all  probability  at  an  earlier  date.  Dis 
may  have  been  a  male  equivalent  of  Earth  as  her  consort. 
When  burned  or  buried  the  men  who  come  from  him  or 
from  Earth  simply  return  to  him  to  live  happily.  The 

1  With  the  Celts  the  night  preceded  the  day  and  the  winter  the 
summer.     Samhain   or    Samfuin   was   celebrated   with   a   feast   for 
three  days  before  and  three  days  after  the  day.    At  this  feast  the 
savages  who  celebrated  exhibited  the  "tongues  of  the  men  they  had 
slain,"  the  greater  number  the  greater  glory.     But  as  they  cheated 
by   substituting   animal    (ox!)    tongues,   it  was   decreed   that   each 
should  unsheathe  his  sword,  to  test  his  word,   for  demons   spoke 
from  the  swords  in  old  times  (Windisch,  op.  cit.,  p.  198). 

2  It  still  remains  questionable  whether  the  fire-practices,  with  fire- 
wheels,   etc.,   were   sun-rites   or   apotropaic.     Dr.    Frazer   has   now 
adopted  the  latter  explanation.     See  the  third  edition  of  Balder  the 
Beautiful,  London,   1913,  in  which  the  author  accepts  the  view  of 
Westermarck,  that  the  fire-festival  was  a  purificatory  guard  against 
evil  spirits. 


CELTIC  RELIGION  I31 

lower  earth-spirits  became  later  the  swarm  of  fairies  and 
brownies,  who  in  northern  lore  preside  over  field  and  house. 
Yet  none  of  these  is  really  older  than  the  Mother  herself 
nor  than  the  great  war-goddess  Andraste,  to  whom  Boadicea 
prayed  when  the  Romans  attacked  her  land.  Historically 
at  least  the  great  deities  are  old  as  they  are  long-lived. 
Rigantona  (Rhiannon)  the  Great  Queen  is  of  old  the  wife 
of  the  king  of  the  underworld  (Pwyll),  who  is  friendly  to 
the  "  sons  of  the  sea  "  and  opposed  to  the  gods  of  light 
(so  that  Gwydion  slays  his  son  Pryderi).  In  the  sixth  cen- 
tury at  Autun  there  was  an  image  carried  about  the  fields 
to  protect  them  in  idol-form.  She  was  called  Berecyntia, 
that  is,  Gaulic  Brigindu,  a  goddess,  who  in  Gaelic  form  was 
mother  of  Ogma  (Ogmios,  the  god  of  the  furrow  and  of 
eloquence),  but  primarily  a  goddess  of  fire  and  fertility. 
As  Saint  Brigit *  in  Christian  times  she  still  retained  at  Kil- 
dare  a  fire-service  presided  over  in  secrecy  by  thirty  nuns, 
who  acted  as  vestal  virgins,  guardians  of  the  fire.  She 
was  daughter  of  the  "  good  god,"  Dagda,  whose  character- 
istic was  skill  or  cunning  (compare  Daksha,  the  dextrous 
god  in  India)  in  Gaelic  legend,  and  consort  of  Bres,  the  god 
of  fertility. 

What  little  we  know  concerning  Celtic  belief  in  a  future 
life  is  gleaned  from  Welsh  and  other  northern  legends. 
The  dead  may  appear  as  birds.  Usually,  however,  soul  and 
body  live  hereafter  in  a  happy  land,  probably  below  earth, 
where  there  are  various  kingdoms  and  kings  who  contend 
with  each  other  as  in  this  life.  Exceptionally  great  men 
may  be  transported  to  the  Blessed  Island  Avallon  or  a  simi- 
lar western  home  of  the  dead,  but  in  Irish  legends  generally 
only  gods  and  heroes  go  thither.  At  the  same  time,  war- 
riors are  supposed  to  be  influential  from  their  tombs  and 

1  Brig  may  mean  flame  or  power.  Brigit  was  one  of  the  Minervas 
mentioned  by  Caesar.  She  presided  over  healing  and  prophecy  as 
well  as  fire  and  smith-work,  either  in  person  or  as  "  another  goddess 
with  the  same  name."  Healing  and  prophecy  are  combined  here 
as  in  the  Apollo-cult.  Brigit  herself  is  a  female  counterpart  of  the 
Hindu  Brihas-pati,  lord  of  power  and  patron  of  the  fire-cult. 


132  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  heads  of  the  slain  are  offered  to  the  mighty  shades,  who 
must  therefore  live  in  or  on  earth.  Oracles  at  graves  are 
also  known;  the  dead  speak  from  the  tomb.  These  views, 
one  of  an  earthly  paradise  (the  Celtic  other-world  is  a  "  land 
of  youth  and  beauty  " ) ,  and  one  of  the  life  in  the  grave 
.("  the  loveless  land  "),  not  to  speak  of  the  western  Elysium, 
do  not  accord  very  well  with  the  Druidic  view  of  metempsy- 
chosis, and  it  is  probable  that  the  latter  was  not  universal 
among  the  Celts.  As  debts  might  be  paid  in  the  next  life, 
a  man  was  apparently  thought  to  be  in  some  place  where 
earthly  conditions  still  hold.  Stories  tell  how  a  mortal  on 
earth  might  wed  a  spectre  of  the  world  below.1  The  fate 
of  the  dead  was  not  conditioned  by  ethical  considerations 
and  even  in  the  transmigration-theory  of  the  Druids  there 
was  no  idea  of  gradual  purification,  such  as  is  found  in 
Pythagoreanism. 

Arms  and  ornaments  were  burned  or  buried  with  the 
dead  and  human  victims  also  accompanied  the  soul,  even 
the  widows  in  voluntary  suttee  sometimes  electing  to  die 
with  their  husbands.  The  dead  were  supposed  to  rise  at 
the  beginning  of  the  year;  Samhain  Eve  (Oct.  31)  was  the 
festival  of  the  dead.  Christmas  Eve  was  called  Mother- 
Night,  when  the  Great  Mother  received  the  dead,  probably 
originally  one  festival  with  Samhain.  The  Dis  Pater  of 
Caesar,  son  or  consort  of  Mother  Earth,  may  have  been  the 
god  depicted  as  a  huge  dog  swallowing  the  dead,  but  this  is 
not  certain.2 

Of  the  misty  myths  of  British-Gaelic  legend  that  of  the 
Holy  Grail  is  the  most  important.  It  is  an  interpretation, 
mediaevally  spiritualized,  of  the  never-failing  dish  of  the 
sun,  as  it  appears  in  India,  or  of  the  "  good  god  "  Dagda, 
in  Gaelic  lore,  whose  guarded  cauldron  spins  about ;  out  of 

xThe  future  world  is  often  located  under  a  lake.  Arthur's  wife 
is  named  "White  Spectre"  (Gwenhwyfar),  which  "suggests  that 
she  too  played  a  part  in  a  story  of  the  same  kind"  (Anwyl,  Celtic 
Religion,  London,  1906). 

2  Others  think  that  Dis  Pater  is  Esus,  or  Bile,  ancestor  of  the 
Irish  Celts, 


CELTIC  RELIGION  133 

which  comes  for  men  and  gods  food  inexhaustible.  In 
Welsh  tradition  it  is  represented  by  a  cauldron  of  magic 
knowledge.  Bran  of  Britain  had  a  cauldron  which  restored 
the  dead  to  life,  like  the  well  of  Diancecht,  the  god  of  medi- 
cine of  the  Danu  tribe.  All  these,  together  with  Medea's 
cauldron  and  Arthur's  Table  Round,  have  been  united  with 
more  or  less  plausibility  as  phases  of  sun-disc  mythology.1 

Dagda  is  the  clever  god  of  the  tribe  of  Danu,  mother  of 
light-gods,  Tuatha  De  Danann,  defended  by  the  sons  of 
Fire,  whose  arms  are  forged  by  Goibniv  (Welsh,  Gofan- 
non),  a  smith-god.  Another  son  of  Dagda  is  Angus,  whose 
music  led  all  to  follow  (Pied  Piper)  and  whose  kisses  be- 
came birds.  The  Danu  tribe  led  by  Nuada  (a  sun-god?) 
was  opposed  by  the  Fir-Bolgs,  whose  gods  were  giant 
Fomorachs,  till  Nuada  lost  a  hand  and  the  Fomorach  Bress 
married  Dagda's  daughter  Brigit.  Mile,  son  of  Bile,  even- 
tually defeated  the  Danus,  whose  Nuada  was  slain  by  the 
Fomorach  Cyclops  Balor  (his  daughter  married  Diancecht). 
The  Danus  then  fled  to  the  western  Isles  of  the  Blest,  those 
preferring  to  remain  becoming  fairy  women  of  the  mounds 
(Bean-Sidhe,  banshees). 

Bress  and  his  Fomorachs  have  been  explained  as  fertiliz- 
ing spirits,  but  the  Celts  regarded  them  as  spirits  of  storm 
and  death.  Perhaps,  as  scath-spirits,  they  were  both  giants 
and  shadows.  A  defender  of  the  Danu  tribe  was  Manan- 
nan,  a  three-legged  glorious  god  and  also  first  king  of 
the  Isle  of  Man,  patron  of  sailors  and  son  of  the  sea,  Ler 
(King  Lear;  cf.  Leicester).  His  son  is  Bran,  an  under- 
ground giant-king,  patron  of  bards,  whose  head  guarded 
the  land.  Erin  was  daughter  of  the  culture-hero  Ogma. 
Boadicea  (61  A.  D.)  was  perhaps  named  for  a  Boudicca 
goddess  of  war,  a  "great  queen,"  like  Morrigan  (Macha) 
and  Nemetona,  another  war-goddess  of  Britain.  Bran's 

1  Compare  A.  B.  Cook,  Zeus,  Cambridge,  1914,  p.  239  (more 
speculation  than  history).  The  Hawk  as  sun  also  enters  into  these 
speculations,  Kirke,  the  Volsci  as  Hawks,  etc.,  and  the  Troy-town 
circles.  Compare  the  Welsh  Gwalchmai  and  Gwalchaved  (Galahed), 
Hawks  of  May  and  of  Summer,  respectively. 


134  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

sister,  Branwen,  the  "  fair-bosom  "  British  goddess,  is  re- 
garded by  some  as  a  "  northern  Venus."  The  British 
equivalent  of  the  Gaelic  Nuada  (above)  is  Nudd  or  Lud, 
who,  as  a  king,  gives  his  name  to  Ludgate  and  London.  At 
Lydney  in  Gloucestershire  the  ruins  of  his  sanctuary  have 
revealed  him  as  a  god  with  a  four-horse  chariot  and  wear- 
ing solar  rays,  his  name  appearing  here  as  Nud  or  Nodon. 
Lug,  the  long-handed  Gaelic  god  of  fire,  may  also  have 
been  a  sun-god.  He  has  already  been  referred  to  as  one 
of  the  gods  recognized  over  a  wide  area,  his  name  (Lugos, 
probably  the  same)  being  preserved  in  Lyons,  Ley  den,  etc. 
It  is  his  son  who  became  king  of  the  Welsh  fairies  (above). 
The  Welsh  Arthurian  tales  have  left  a  deposit  of  dwarfs, 
fairies,  and  magicians  in  Brittany,  of  cognate  stock,  and 
a  noble  circle  of  knights  and  ladies  in  English  and  Conti- 
nental literature.  What  the  characters  were  originally  it 
is  hard  to  say.  Arthur's  queen,  Guinevere,  has  already  been 
explained  as  a  spectre-bride.  Lud  was  one  of  his  knights 
and  married  his  sister.  Gawaine  may  be  the  sun.  Arthur 
himself  may  have  been  a  "  Romanized  Briton  "  or  a  culture- 
hero.  Merlin  is  undoubtedly  a  primitive  character  (Britain 
at  first  was  called  Merlin's  Place).  His  figure  reverts  to 
a  time  when  culture-gods  were  gradually  superseding  older 
deities.  Arthur  scorned  the  defence  given  the  land  by 
Bran's  head  and  the  Saxon  conquest  was  the  result.  But 
Arthur  passed  to  Avilion  (Avallon,  Elysium)  before  the 
Saxons  arrived  and  there  is  here  no  rumour  of  war,  as  in 
Ireland,  prior  to  the  coming  of  the  present  inhabitants. 
"  Not  by  war  and  bloodshed  but  by  justice  and  peace  "  did 
Arthur  conquer  the  country.  He  taught  agriculture,  civil 
government,  and  literature  by  means  of  bards.  According 
to  Welsh  tradition,  the  first  "  pillar  of  Britain  "  was  Hu 
Gadarn,  the  ancestor  of  the  Cymric  race.  The  name  Britain 
comes  from  Prydain,  son  of  Aed  the  Great,  who  first  estab- 
lished a  settled  government  and  was  the  second  pillar.1 

1  Squire,  Mythology  of  Ancient  Britain  and  Ireland,  Chicago,  no 
date.    Aed  also  means  fire  and  he  may  derive  from  a  god. 


CELTIC  RELIGION  135 

Yet  what  has  been  guessed  about  the  Celtic  gods  is  more 
entertaining  than  convincing  and  however  interesting  these 
myths  may  be,  they  give  us  no  clear  light  on  primitive  Celtic 
religious  belief.  But  they  help  to  show  more  clearly  its  chief 
peculiarity,  the  humanizing  tendency  of  Celtic  religion.  It 
brings  the  divine  to  earth. 

From  another  heroic  cycle,  concerning  the  Red  Irish  of 
Ulster,  scholars  have  drawn  the  conclusion  that  the  old  Irish 
kings  were  looked  upon  as  divine.  We  know  that  chief- 
tains were  sometimes  deified  and  that  gods  have  descended 
to  earth  as  kings,  but  it  is  not  till  the  Irish  legend  of 
Conchobar  that  we  hear  of  "terrestrial  gods"  (dia  tal- 
maide)  as  an  epithet  of  chieftains  and  then  only  because 
these  chieftains  claim  descent  from  the  Tuatha  De  Danann. 
These  god-descended  kings  are  in  fact  no  more  than  the 
"  god-born  "  chieftains  of  Greece,  except  as  they  are  original 
gods  that  have  been  converted  into  pseudo-historic  kings. 
One  of  them,  famous  for  cattle-raiding,  is  Cooley  (Cu- 
chullin),  the  son  of  Conchobar 's  sister,  mysteriously  be- 
gotten by  the  god  Lug  (above),1  and  he  himself  per- 
haps existed  only  in  poetry.  As  son  of  the  sun-god  no 
one  could  look  at  his  glory;  his  bodily  heat  was  so  great 
that  it  melted  snow  and  boiled  water.  It  is  such  "  kings  " 
who  in  Irish  legends  suffer  the  taboos  (gessa)  of  which 
much  has  been  made  in  the  theory  of  the  priestly  origin  of 
the  royal  power. 

Cooley's  warriors  were  attacked  in  Ulster  by  all  the  rest  of 
Ireland,  through  the  instigation  of  the  queen  of  Connaught, 
at  a  time  when  they  were  lying  magically  ill  (in  winter,  when 
sun-gods  are  weak?)  ;  but  Cooley  fought  one  chief  a  day 
and  defeated  each  champion  in  turn,  while  Lug  healed  his 
wounds,  till  the  Ulster  heroes  recovered  from  their  "  curse  " 
of  illness,  brought  upon  them  by  Macha,  the  mate  of  Mor- 

1  His  sister  Dechtire  becomes  a  bird  and  devours  vegetation.  She 
is  also  his  charioteer.  A  boy  she  adopts  dies  and  turns  out  to  be 
the  sun-god,  by  whom  unwittingly  she  becomes  mother  of  Setanta 
(Cuchullin).  See  Windisch,  op.  cit.,  p.  134!. 


136  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

rigan,  and  routed  the  foe.  This  same  Cooley  slays  his  own 
son  in  battle  without  knowing  it  (like  Rustum)  and  is  slain 
by  trickery  after  breaking  taboo  (here  he  eats  dog-flesh). 

Another  cycle  of  stories  relates  that  the  god  Camuios  or 
Cumhal  (heaven?)  had  a  son  Fionn  or  Finn,  who  demands 
the  kingdom,  from  which  the  Gaul  has  ousted  him,  and  heads 
a  band  of  patriots,  among  whom  is  Ossian  (Oisin),  called 
Fianna  ("Fenians").  These  Fenians  mingle  with  the 
fairies  1  and  Dagda's  son  gives  his  daughter  to  Finn.  Sup- 
ported by  the  Tuatha  De  Danann,  the  Fenians  finally  defeat 
the  king  (of  Ireland),  who  has  united  with  the  Gaul  to  dis- 
possess Finn.  After  three  hundred  years,  Ossian,  who  has 
meantime  been  living  in  the  Land  of  Youth  (Paradise)  with 
the  daughter  of  Ler's  son  Manannan,  returns  to  his  own 
country  and  converses  with  Patrick,  who  exhorts  him  to 
weep  and  repent.  "  Weep  will  I,"  replies  Ossian,  "  but  not 
for  God,  but  because  Finn  and  the  Fenians  are  dead."  2 

Patrick  came  to  Ireland  in  the  fifth  century  and  St. 
Columba  converted  the  Picts  in  the  sixth  century,  by  which 
time  paganism  was  declared  by  a  contemporary  writer  to  be 
extinct  in  civilized  Britain.  Christian  records  have  received 
beliefs  already  influenced  by  German  legends.3  What  we 
are  fain  to  call  Celtic  in  northern  belief  is  often  of  doubtful 
origin,  but  despite  wavering  etymologies  and  daring  equa- 
tions, enough  remains  certain  to  establish  the  broad  base  of 
Celtic  religion.  Through  forms  generally  local  may  be  seen 
a  prevailing  faith  in  many  gods,  some  of  higher  phenomena, 
more  of  terrestrial  powers,  a  special  devotion  to  nature  in 
her  earthly  manifestations,  not  unconnected  with  the  poetic 
temperament  of  the  people  and  the  spirituality  of  the  Celtic 

1  Windisch  has  shown  that  the  Fenians  were  not  a  primitive  race 
before  the  Scots,  as  used  to  be  thought.    Windisch,  op.  cit.,  p.  154. 

2  Squire,  op.  cit. 

3  Many  mythological  traits  have  been  inherited  by  the  Christian 
Church  in  Ireland,  whose  saints  reflect  mythological  and  Druidic 
attributes  and  whose  legends  have  absorbed  a  mass  of  Celtic  "  lower 
mythology."     See   on   this    fascinating   subject   C.    Plummer,    Vitae 
Sanctorum  Hibernicz,  Oxford,  1910,  p.  cxxix,  seq. 


CELTIC  RELIGION  137 

saints.  Perhaps,  too,  the  domination  of  the  priestly  power 
(the  Druids),  as  contrasted  with  the  freedom  of  the  Ger- 
mans, may  be  a  racial  trait  due  to  the  mysticism  of  the  Celtic 
character. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Caesar,  De  Bella  Gallico,  iv.  2of.,  vi.  i8f.;  parts  of  Diodorus 
Siculus,  Strabo,  Mela. 

Pliny,  Natural  History,  iv.  I02f.,  etc.,  Tacitus,  Agricola. 

T.  R.  Holmes,  Caesar's  Conquest  of  Great  Britain  and  Conquest 
of  Gaul,  London,  1907. 

Ernst  Windisch,  Irische  Texte,  Leipzig,  1880. 

J.  Rhys,  Celtic  Heathendom,  Hibbert  Lectures,  London,  1888. 

Edward  Anwyl,  Celtic  Religion  in  Prehistoric  Times,  London, 
1906. 

Charles  Squire,  Mythology  of  Ancient  Britain  and  Ireland, 
Chicago,  no  date. 

G.  Grupp,  Kultur  der  alien  Kelten  und  Germanen,  Munich, 
1905. 

Alfred  T.  Nutt,  Studies  on  the  Legend  of  the  Holy  Grail,  Lon- 
don, 1888 ;  Ossianic  Literature,  London,  1899. 

J.  A.  MacCulloch,  Religion  of  the  Ancient  Celts,  London,  1911. 


CHAPTER  NINE 

RELIGION  OF  THE  SLAVIC   PEOPLES 

IN  English  we  are  wont  to  speak  of  any  people  east  of  Ger- 
many as  Slavic,  though  we  sometimes  call  the  Lithuanians, 
Letts,  and  Prussians  West  Slavs  in  distinction  from  the 
Russians,  Czech,  Poles,  Wends,  Slovaks,  and  Serbians.  The 
former  should  be  distinguished  as  Baltic  and  the  latter  as 
Slavic  groups,  the  Baltic  peoples  lying  between  Germany  and 
the  true  Slavs.1  The  mythology  of  both  groups  is  in  part 
identical  and  they  both  belong  to  one  linguistic  family.  The 
earliest  reference  to  their  religion  may  be  the  remark  made 
by  Tacitus  concerning  the  Aestii  (Germania,  45),  who  are 
described  as  East  Germans  worshipping  the  mother  of  the 
gods  and  carrying  the  figures  of  wild  boars  as  religious  in- 
signia. The  connecting  link  between  the  Baltic  and  real 
Slavic  groups  is  their  mutual  adoration  of  Perkunas  as 
chief  god.  He  is  the  god  of  storm  and  thunder  and  was 
formerly  regarded  as  identical  with  the  Vedic  Parjanya 
(rain-god)  ;  but  the  etymology  is  now  suspect. 

The  first  clear  evidence  regarding  the  religion  of  the  Prus- 
sians is  from  the  fourteenth  century,  at  which  time  they  are 
described  as  worshipping  the  sun,  moon,  stars,  thunder, 
birds,  and  animals;  almost  every  creature  being  to  them  a 
divinity.  They  are  said  also  to  have  had  holy  groves  and 
fields  and  waters,  which  were  taboo  to  the  people  at  large.2 
In  general  the  Baltic  group  worshipped  heavenly  phenom- 

1  Among  these  are  usually  enrolled  the  Bulgarians,  but  they  are 
Slavs  only  by  language,  being  racially  allied  with  the  Turks. 

2  The  original  account  (1326  A.  D.)  of  this  taboo  says:  habuerunt 
etiam  lucos  campos  et  aqas  sic  quod  secare  aut  agros  colere  vel 
piscari  ausi  non  Juerant  in  eisdem    (Usener,  Gotternamen,  Bonn, 
1896,  p.  81). 

138 


SLAVIC  RELIGION  139 

ena,  especially  the  sun,  moon,  star  of  the  morning,  and  dawn, 
but  above  all  Perkunas,  to  whom  sacrifice  was  made  as  late 
as  the  seventeenth  century.  Some  mythology  sprang  up  con- 
cerning him :  his  mother  cares  for  and  bathes  the  sun,  whose 
daughter  was  loved  by  Perkunas.  The  sun  may  be  the 
"  horses'  god  "  called  Usinj  by  the  Letts  in  the  seventeenth 
century. 

Offerings  were  made  also  to  domestic  spirits,  notably  to 
the  house-serpent.  Every  aspect  of  life  was  governed  by 
its  special  spirit  or  genius,  such  as  the  spirit  of  house,  of 
hearth,  of  wealth,  of  birth,  etc.  The  female  spirit  that 
watches  over  the  bed  of  the  mother  is  also  a  sort  of  Fortuna 
or  luck-goddess,  like  the  Roman  Carmenta.  Other  spirits  or 
deities  guard  and  care  for  the  field,  the  flock,  the  bees,  the 
bride,  the  groom,  etc.  They  may  be  described  as  sacred 
specialists. 

We  have  already  seen  that  certain  religious  phenomena 
are  conspicuous  in  some  environments  while  not  unknown 
elsewhere,  fetishism  in  Africa,  taboo  and  mana  in  Polynesia, 
totemism  in  North  America.  So  here,  the  special  character 
of  these  spirits,  as  undifferentiated  powers  of  an  abstract, 
rather  than  personal,  nature  has  been  particularly  empha- 
sized. Usener  and  other  scholars  following  his  lead  (since 
1896)  have  made  it  the  basic  form  of  all  religious  phenom- 
ena, so  that  Usener  himself  derived  all  gods  of  the  Indo- 
Europeans  from  prehistoric  types  of  this  sort,  the  closest 
analogue  to  the  Lithuanian  spirits  being  the  Numina  of  early 
Roman  religion.  This  is  therefore  the  proper  place  to  ana- 
lyse the  phenomena  a  little  more  carefully  and  see  whether 
such  far-reaching  results  as  have  been  drawn  from  them  are 
fully  justified. 

These  Lithuanian  spirits  are  described  for  us  by  mission- 
aries and  travellers  of  the  fourteenth  and  following  cen- 
turies, who  briefly  mention  with  disdain  the  various  gods  of 
the  people  they  regard  (rightly  enough)  as  little  better  than 
savages ;  for  such  were  the  Prussians  of  six  centuries  ago, 
whose  primitive  religion  was  only  gradually  influenced  by 


140  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Scandinavian  and  Christian  thought,  the  Scandinavians  par- 
ticularly having  introduced  among  all  the  Baltic  tribes  the 
great  temples  and  costly  images  found  there. 

But  even  according  to  the  accounts  of  the  missionaries, 
it  is  evident  that  the  Lithuanian  deities  were  by  no  means 
such  sexless  abstractions  as  Usener  represents  them.  We 
have  already  mentioned  Perkunas  (Perkuns,  Perun),  the 
great  god  of  thunder  and  storm  common  to  the  Baltic  and 
Slavic  pantheon,  and  obviously  the  greatest  or  one  of  the 
greatest  divinities.  He  was  worshipped  by  some  tribes  on 
the  mountain  tops  and  to  him  the  oak  was  sacred  as  the 
wood  from  which,  in  conjunction  with  the  linden,  fire  was 
produced;  so  that  these  trees  themselves  were  sacred,  to 
men  and  women,  respectively.  Offerings  were  made  to  the 
oak  as  his  tree,  sick  people  climbing  three  times  through  the 
aperture  made  by  the  trunk  and  bough  and  leaving  behind 
them  as  offerings  clothes,  knives,  and  other  things  fastened 
to  the  tree ;  or,  in  case  money  was  the  offering,  it  was  placed 
on  the  ground  before  the  oak.  A  perpetual  fire  was  kept 
burning  in  honour  of  Perkunas.  When  a  thunderstorm 
arose  the  old  Prussians  fell  on  their  knees  and  cried  aloud, 
"  Pass  us  by,  Perkunas."  Sacrifices  to  him  lasted  till  the 
seventeenth  century  as  a  rain-invocation,  since  it  was  he  who 
sent  rain.  He  is  known  as  the  god  par  excellence.  This  is 
surely  no  sexless  Numen,  for,  as  already  stated,  he  has  a 
mythology  representing  him  as  wooer  of  the  sun's  daughter. 
Even  the  Letts,  who  make  "  mothers  "  of  most  of  the  Lithu- 
anian gods,  do  not  feminize  him.  The  priest,  Vaidelotte, 
wise  man,  wizard,  knew  him  only  as  a  mighty  male  god  im- 
personating the  same  natural  phenomenon  that  has  made  par- 
allel gods  in  other  places.  With  him  as  a  secondary  god  is 
revered  Lituvanis,  "  rain-maker,'*  also  a  male  god,  appar- 
ently an  underling  who  makes  the  rain  sent  in  storm  by 
Perkunas. 

Another  natural  phenomenon  is  Veyopatis,  god  of  wind, 
whom  the  Letts  turned  into  a  "  mother  "  god,  Veya  Mate. 
We  shall  have  occasion  elsewhere  to  speak  of  this  procedure, 


SLAVIC  RELIGION  141 

but  it  suffices  here  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  this  con- 
version of  male  into  female  deities  results  in  a  false  appear- 
ance of  matrilinear  and  therefore  earlier  social  condition.1 
It  is  well  known  that  the  Mothers  of  the  Letts  are  not  earlier 
but  later  forms  of  male  gods.  But  in  both  interpretations 
the  deities  are  anthropomorphized  sufficiently  to  be  regarded 
as  either  male  or  female,  not  "  sexless  Numina." 

Corresponding,  or  rather  antithetical,  to  the  god  of  thun- 
der or  the  sky  (Svarog,  sky-god,  is  Russian),  stands  the 
figure  of  Zemipatis,  the  Earth-lord,  who  appears  also  as  a 
female,  Zemeluks,  whom  the  dead  serve,  but  chiefly  as 
Zemininkas,  the  great  god  of  the  underworld,  to  whom  a 
sacrifice  was  made  at  the  time  (November  2nd)  of  All-Souls, 
and  in  December  or  when  bad  weather  was  approaching. 
To  him  a  cock  and  hen  were  sacrificed  and  prayer  was  made. 
Each  worshipper  laid  upon  the  ground  some  of  the  food  he 
was  about  to  eat  and  "  gave  thanks  "  to  the  Earth-god,  hop- 
ing also  thereby  to  get  further  blessings  from  this  male 
Hades,  who,  moreover,  was  the  brother  of  the  dea  terrestris 
called  Zemyna,  a  goddess  who  brings  blessings  to  households 
and  lands,  and  is  also  revered  at  burials. 

Sun-worship  is  also  a  Lithuanian  trait.  Saule-le,  the 
little  sun,  is  the  mother  of  the  stars,  also  the  bride  of  the 
sky.  "  In  Lithuania,"  we  are  expressly  told,  "  there  was  a 
race  that  worshipped  the  sun."  An  early  myth  represents 
him  as  a  male  god  formerly  captured  and  so  invisible,  till  the 
stars  with  a  huge  hammer  broke  open  his  prison-house,  and 
this  hammer  plays  a  part  in  the  ritual  of  his  worship.  His 
name  appears  in  various  forms  (Zvaigdukas,  "Suaixtix"). 
In  Kurland  the  peasant  boys  and  girls  at  the  solstice  still  run 
about  with  fire  crying  out,  "  Ligo,  ligo,  O  Sun,"  that  is, 
"swing"  (again  through  the  sky),  an  interesting  reminis- 
cence of  the  swing-ceremony,  practised  also  by  Hindus  and 
American  Indians,  as  a  sort  of  sympathetic  magic  to  help 

1  Matrilinear  succession  itself  is  not  necessarily  early ;  among  the 
inhabitants  of  Borneo,  for  example,  matriarchy  is  later  than  patri- 
archy. 


142  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  sun.  Of  moon-worship  there  remains  a  trace  in  the 
worship  of  Menu,  the  new  moon,  to  whom  the  (eastern) 
Prussians  still  pray. 

Among  lower  phenomena  are  to  be  noticed  Akmo,  the 
Rock  (god),  Bangputtis,  the  "wave-blower,"  a  water-god, 
and  numerous  gods  of  the  farm,  such  as  Baubis,  cattle-god, 
Babilus,  bee-god,  Bobilis,  garden-god,  Gurcha  or  Kurcha, 
the  corn-genius,  made  of  the  ears  of  corn  at  harvest,  but 
identified  with  Padrymbe  or  Autrimpus  as  god  of  moisture 
and  growth.1 

What  is  true  in  Usener's  theory  is  that  abstract  personi- 
fications are  also  found  along  with  personified  phenomena. 
But  this  is  not  new ;  such  spirits,  Increase,  Health,  etc.,  have 
always  been  recognized.  So  the  Lithuanian  Budintaia  ( fern, 
but  also  masc. )  is  an  "  awakener,"  a  spirit  like  the  Vedic 
Savitar,  and  Bentis  is  "  binder "  as  conciliator,  the  spirit 
that  unites  in  harmony  those  travelling  together  (compare 
Lygiczus,  "  like-maker  ").  But  alongside  of  these  there  are 
countless  "  lords,"  corresponding  to  the  Vedic  lord  of  the 
fields,  such  as  "  house-lord,"  "  field-lord,"  "  fountain-lord," 
"beer-lord"  (Raugu-patis),  who  are  not  the  things  them- 
selves but  the  lords  or  gods  thereof ;  nor  is  the  lord-form  to 
be  assumed  as  a  "  later  "  element.  Fire  is  worshipped  as 
"  holy  Ugnis,"  a  male  god,  though  the  feminizing  influence 
is  felt  also  in  the  conception  of  fire  as  Ponyke  or  Our  Lady, 
who  gives  omens ;  as  omens  are  also  drawn  from  the  god  of 
fountains  and  water,  to  whom  snakes  are  sacred.  The 
house-snake  himself  is  no  abstraction  but  a  real  animal  god, 
as  is  Yvas  the  owl  (as  god)  or  Vilkas,  the  wolf,  to  whom  an 
animal  is  sacrificed  in  December  with  a  ceremony  to  keep 
wolves  from  the  herd.  Even  the  group-spirits  like  the 
Veles,  ghostly  forms  of  the  dead  as  female  spirits,  and 

1  Compare  Usener,  op.  cit.,  p.  91,  and  Mannhardt,  Myth.  For- 
schungen,  Berlin,  1884,  p.  286f . ;  Wald  und  Feldculte,  1875,  p.  190. 
As  Autrimpus  interchanges  with  Antrimpus,  so  perhaps  Andra  is 
to  be  read  as  god  of  storm  for  Audros  (sc.  deva)  genitive  of  Audra, 
storm  (Indra).  With  Kurcha,  compare  the  maize-goddess  figured 
by  the  American  Indians. 


SLAVIC  RELIGION  143 

Laumes,  forms  representing  nightmares,  are  not  abstrac- 
tions but  very  living  creatures,  the  former  perhaps  identical 
with  the  Vile,  fairy-spirits,  of  the  southern  Slavs.  They 
bring  good-fortune,  etc.,  and  are  anything  but  Numina,  as 
they  are  passionate  and  unruly. 

Other  forms  are  those  of  the  personal  genius  or  "  helper  "  ; 
Puko,  a  sort  of  friendly  dragon,  who  has  a  secret  apart- 
ment in  the  house  and,  if  served  with  food  and  drink,  brings 
wealth  to  the  house-holder ;  Ausca  and  Bezlea,  Aurora  and 
the  corresponding  sunset-light  as  deity.  Gyvate,  the  house- 
snake,  may  be  the  ancestral  ghost  in  the  form  of  a  snake,  as 
gyvas  means  "  living  one,"  but  this  is  doubtful.  The  house- 
lord  called  Dimstipatis  is  a  sort  of  Lar,  fumi  focique  doini- 
nus;  but  the  regular  word  for  ghosts  *  is  Deives  (cf .  Aves- 
tan  daevas},  as  "  goddesses,"  and  virtually  the  same  word, 
Deivaites,  designates  the  goddesses  of  springs  and  rivers 
(nymphs).  An  interesting  parallel  to  the  Hindu  use  of 
goddess  as  a  general  term  for  the  plague-spirit  is  found  in 
Diedeveite,  "  great  goddess,"  the  only  name  of  the  deity  who 
brought  the  plague  of  1571.  There  are  also  those  thumbkin 
gnomes  called  Barzdukai,  bearded  men,  who  live  under 
earth  and  give  blessings,  and  the  Krukai,  similar  dwarfs, 
distinguished  by  a  red  top,  who  dwell  in  caves  and  the  house 
and  bring  luck.  Along  with  these,  but  in  no  wise  more  prim- 
itive, are  those  abstractions  on  which  Usener  lays  especial 
weight,  Skalsa,  Euporia,  Vais-gautis,  "  fruitfulness-getting," 
Eratinis,  adjective  diminutive  as  god  of  lambs,  eras,  Dvar- 
gautis,  "  court-yard  guardian,"  not  to  speak  of  Datanus 
or  donator  (bonorum),  Blizgulis,  snow-god  ("  sparkler  "), 
and  the  tree-gods  called  by  the  tree-name,  such  as  Birzulis, 
little  Birch,  as  god.  Yet  tree-cult  is  not  the  cult  of  a 
Nomen.  We  are  told  that  the  earliest  missionaries  in  the 
fourteenth  century  were  routed  especially  by  the  women, 
who  resented  attacks  on  their  tree-divinities,  which  seem  to 
have  been  especially  favoured  by  them.  Death  is  not  an 

1  Swetas  Meitas  among  the  Letts  are  "  pure  maidens,"  as  beings 
of  the  under-world. 


144  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

abstraction  and  Giltine,  which  means  death,  is  a  goddess  so 
alive  that  she  is  worshipped  even  now.  She  also  as  Deive, 
the  goddess,  is  personified  and  has  her  hand-maiden,  Ma- 
gila,  the  Grave.  It  is  true  that  Gotha,  the  goddess  of  in- 
crease of  cattle,  is  an  abstraction  from  the  word  for  herd, 
and  that  sacrifice  was  made  to  her;  and  that  we  have  com- 
panion-forms to  Silvanus  in  Girystis,  god  of  the  wood,  Lau- 
kosargas,  guardians  of  the  meadow.  Further,  Luck  and  Ill- 
luck  are  personified ;  Gondu  at  weddings  is  invoked  by 
women  and  Pizius,  invoked  by  men,  is  a  phallic  spirit;  but 
these  are  no  older,  so  far  as  the  evidence  goes,  than  the  per- 
sonified phenomena  which  have  become  the  most  important 
gods. 

A  natural  but  striking  aspect  of  the  Lett  religion  is  the 
conversion  of  Christian  powers  into  native  deities.  Thus 
Maria  becomes  an  epithet  of  the  "  Mother  of  Cattle,"  who  is 
invoked  as  Lope  mate  Maria.  So  in  Lithuanian,  peklo,  hell, 
gives  rise  to  Pikulas,  Pluto, .as  a  new  god  of  the  infernal 
regions. 

As  the  Baltic  Daives  are  allied  to  the  Avestan  daevas  or 
evil  spirits,  so  the  general  name  for  God  in  Slavic  is  Bogu, 
Persian  Baga,  as  sharer  or  giver,  the  spirit  called  the  "  Phry- 
gian Zeus,"  Bagaios.  The  only  god  the  Slavs  had  was  Per- 
kunas,  according  to  Procopius,  though  they  worshipped 
rivers,  springs,  "  and  other  demons."  Their  sacrifice  was 
said  to  be  for  divination ;  which  aim  was  otherwise  secured 
by  water,  as  to  the  coming  harvest,  and  by  a  war-horse,  as  to 
the  outcome  of  battle.  The  idol  of  the  god  who  rode  this 
horse  at  night  was  a  many-headed  effigy  destroyed  in  1168. 
His  name,  Svanto-vit,  is  thought  by  some  to  be  no  more  than 
an  adaptation  of  Saint  Vitus,  but  his  cult,  as  prophesying 
god  of  the  Wends,  probably  contains  original  elements  later 
foisted  upon  the  Saint  The  Svanto-vit  festival  at  Riigen 
was  an  intemperate  orgy  of  all  the  Baltic  Slavs.  Images, 
priests,  and  sacred  groves  distinguish  the  Polish  gods,  cele- 
brated at  fixed  seasons  by  male  and  female  worshippers, 
who  sang  and  danced  in  their  honour  in  an  unrestrained 


SLAVIC  RELIGION  145 

manner.  They  appear  to  have  been  gods  of  the  seasons, 
spring,  harvest,  etc.,  and  not  to  have  been  ghosts  or  mere 
Numina.  The  binding  up  of  the  last  ears  of  the  harvest 
into  an  idol  of  the  harvest-spirit  (Kurcha)  is  a  general  trait 
of  peasant  religion  in  Europe,  found  not  only  among  the 
Baltic  Slavs  but  also  among  the  Germans.  Much  in  Slavic, 
just  as  in  Celtic  religion,  is  the  primitive  undergrowth 
common  to  all  the  (European)  inhabitants  before  Aryan 
culture  began.  Of  this  sort  may  be  the  spring  festival,  when 
a  figure  representing  Marzan  or  Marana  is  drowned,  per- 
haps to  insure  future  strength  by  passing  on  his  power. 

How  much  Christian  influence  has  made  itself  felt  in 
Slavic  religion  is  doubtful.  John  the  Baptist  has  become 
Ivan  Kupalo,  the  god  of  summer  f ruitf ulness ;  Perun  (Rus- 
sian equivalent  of  Perkunas),  the  thunder-god,  has  con- 
versely become  Saint  Elias ;  while  Saint  Blasius  has  become 
the  god  of  herds,  Volos.  Idols  were  common,  some  of 
them  costly.  That  of  Perun  at  Kiev  was  destroyed  in  988. 
It  was  of  silver  and  gold,  held  a  fire-stone,  and  an  oak-wood 
fire  burned  ever  before  it.  The  underlying  Slavic  religion, 
however,  is  all  pagan  and  it  is  apparently  rather  closely 
connected  with  Persian  (Zoroastrian)  beliefs,  as  not  only 
the  names  but  the  practice  testify,  notably  the  common  em- 
ployment of  a  dog  to  catch  the  expiring  soul,  or,  usage  of 
the  tenth  century,  to  go  with  a  man  into  the  next  world. 
If  not  buried,  the  soul,  dusha,  wandered  in  trees ;  but  when 
cared  for  properly  it  went  by  way  of  the  usual  path  of  souls 
to  the  fields  of  the  gods.  As  late  as  931  A.  D.,  a  girl  was 
buried  with  a  dead  man  to  accompany  him  on  the  journey 
into  the  hereafter.  Among  things  buried  with  the  dead  the 
ladder  is  unique ;  it  is  for  the  soul  to  climb  out  of  the  grave. 
Burning  was  also  practised  as  well  as  burying.  The  ship- 
like  shape  of  the  coffin  indicates  Scandinavian  influence. 

As  opposed  to  the  idea  that  all  spirits  are  Numina  or 
spirits  of  the  field,  stands  a  host  of  gods  like  Daj-bog,  sun- 
god,  Ogoni,  Fire,  Svarog,  sky-god,  not  to  speak  of  Domovoj, 
the  house-spirit,  and  other  spirits  of  wood  and  water,  which 


146  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

latter  might  be  interpreted  as  of  any  sort,  either  as  hearth- 
or  ancestor-spirit,  and  either  as  singular  or  plural,  since  the 
Domovoj  is  a  sort  of  Penates,  helpful  spirit (s)  of  the  home. 
But  sun,  fire,  and  sky  still  linger  in  the  names  of  the  greater 
gods,  to  reveal  their  original  form. 

The  southern  branch  of  the  Slavs  (Servian,  Slovak,  Slo- 
venian) has  a  mass  of  tales  out  of  which  old  myths  have 
been  extracted  with  more  or  less  dubiety,  tales  of  nymphs 
and  wood-maidens,  of  the  love  of  the  sun-god  for  the  morn- 
ing-star and  of  the  moon's  infatuation  for  the  same  charmer, 
though  sun-  and  moon-cult  are  strange  to  the  southern 
Slavs;  especially  tales  of  the  Vile  fairies  (above),  who 
tempt  men,  protect  them,  or  destroy  them.  These  are  ex- 
plained by  some  scholars  as  vegetation-spirits,  though  their 
functions,  which  relate  them  sometimes  to  the  clouds  and 
sometimes  to  the  fate  of  man,  as  influential  for  good  or  bad 
fortune,  scarcely  corroborate  this  explanation.  They  are 
quite  anthropomorphic  spirits,  falling  in  love,  becoming 
jealous  and  envious,  bewitching,  and  helping  man,  whose 
nature  they  share.  Spirits  of  illness  are  also  recognized  and 
vampire  spirits  who  suck  blood,  against  whom  magic  for- 
mulas are  available.  The  last  are  generally  believed  to  be 
ghosts.  Fate  or  Fortune  is  represented  as  a  goddess  by  the 
Servians,  who  offer  her  libations  and  coins  for  good  luck. 
There  are  also  kobalts  and  similar  spirits  and  among  the 
Russians  there  is  a  demon  of  cold  weather;  while  various 
rites  at  the  equinoxes,  harvest,  and  spring-time  keep  alive 
old  pagan  ideas  of  gods  of  fertility,  the  names  of  many  of 
them  remaining  only  in  the  (present)  designation  of  towns. 

But  the  remains  of  genuine  Slavic  religion  are  scanty 
and  not  very  satisfactory  for  the  interpretation  of  primitive 
religious  notions.  The  Slavs  have  kept  in  touch  with  antiq- 
uity in  preserving  as  gods  the  forms  of  Perkuna  and  Svarog 
and  a  few  more  great  gods  and  in  their  adhesion  to  old  sea- 
sonal rites ;  but  the  interpretation  of  the  lower  mythology  and 
of  the  influence  on  that  mythology  of  later  thought  and  of 
foreign  ideas  is  not  certain.  The  solar  mythology  found  in 


SLAVIC  RELIGION  147 

Mannhardt's  collections  *  has  no  great  importance  for  primi- 
tive Slavic  religious  conceptions,  as  a  specimen  or  two  will 
show  :  "  I  look  upon  the  sun  as  upon  my  little  mother  ;  so 
warm  and  pleasant  is  she  ;  only  speech  she  lacks  "  ;  "  Behind 
the  hill  in  the  valley  stand  three  silver  gates;  through  one 
comes  God,  through  the  second  comes  the  blessed  Maria; 
through  the  third  comes  the  sun  with  two  proud  golden 
steeds."  The  most  instructive  aspect  of  the  religion  as  a 
whole  is  undoubtedly  the  large  number  of  (Lithuanian,  Let- 
tic)  individual  spirits  representing  material  genera,  as  Birch, 
Sheep,  Bee,  and  the  parallel  with  the  functional  spirits  of  the 
Romans  and  other  peoples.  Yet  because  the  Lithuanians 
have  a  "  corner  "  spirit  of  the  space  between  hearth  and  wall 
(like  that  of  the  Ainus),  we  must  not  forget  that  "holy 
fire  "  is  a  greater  spirit  of  wider  application,  nor  can  we 
ignore  the  wind-god  Veyo-patis  as  equivalent  to  the  Vedic 
Vayu,  wind-god,  any  more  than  Slavic  Bogu  and  Persian 
Baga  can  be  ignored  in  the  interpretation  of  primitive  Slavic 
religion.  The  mediaeval  accounts  of  the  spirits  are  not  qf 
themselves  satisfactory  evidence  that  the  spirits  were  under- 
stood by  the  reporters,  and  the  spirits  appear,  through  the 
reports,  at  so  late  a  stage  as  to  make  any  induction  in  re- 
gard to  their  original  nature  and  function  extremely  hazard- 
ous. The  most  significant  religious  rite  recorded  of  the 
Lithuanians  is  that  alluded  to  above,  in  which  Perkunas' 
worshippers  pray  to  him  to  "  pass  them  by,"  as  if  he  were 
an  evil  spirit,  which  for  the  nonce  he  was.  Of  ethical  qual- 
ity in  the  divine  nature  there  is  little  trace.  The  worship- 
pers express  gratitude  and  have  spirits  of  concord  (above)  ; 
but  the  only  spirit  indicating  moral  obligation  is  the  "  sup- 
plicants' god,"  Ublanicza.  Yet  Bogu  as  "  giver  "  recog- 
nized man's  dependence  on  the  source  of  good. 

Lithuanian  religion  here  and  there  shows  traces  of  an 
undeveloped  belief  in  metempsychosis.  Undeveloped  also, 
but  apparent,  is  the  belief  in  an  evil  spirit,  opposed  to  the 


Lettischen  Sonnenmythen,  Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnologic,  vii, 
pp.  73f.,  209f.,  281  f. 


148  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

good  Bog,  a  nascent  dualism.  Priests  of  the  native  cult  are 
lacking;  wizards  and  witches  replace  them.  Their  temples 
were  probably  no  more  than  sacred  huts.  Propitiation  is 
the  key-note  of  religious  expression.  Gratitude  to  the 
spirits  is  as  rare  as  among  the  Slavs,  but  is  sometimes 
expressed. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

F.  S.  Krauss,  Sitte  und  Branch  der  Sudslaven,  Vienna,  1885. 
J.    W.    E.    Mannhardt,    Mythologische    Porschungen,    Berlin, 

1884 ;  and  Wald  und  Feldkulte,  Berlin,  1875-77. 
Hermann  K.  Usener,  Gotternamen,  Bonn,  1896. 
Louis  Leger,  La  Mythologie  Slave,  Paris,  1901. 
For  the  Lithuanians,  see  Mannhardt,  Die  Lettischen  Sonnen- 

mythen,  Zeitschrift  fut  Ethnologie,  Berlin,  vii.  pp.  73,  209, 

281 ;  and  A.  Leskien  and  K.  Brugmann,  Litauische  Volks- 

lieder  und  Marchen,  Strassburg,  1882. 


CHAPTER  TEN 

RELIGION   OF   THE  TEUTONS 

THE  folk-god  Teutates  and  the  possible  Celtic  parallels  of 
Woden  and  Thor  (above,  pp.  123-5)  show  that  there  is  no 
certain  division  between  Teuton  and  Celt,  neighbors  closely 
joined  and  much  confused  even  in  antiquity.  Many  names 
of  persons  and  places  are  still  of  uncertain  origin.  The 
lower  mythology  of  Celt  and  Teuton  coincides  to  a  marked 
degree;  for  example,  the  elves,  nixes,  and  pixes  are  of  the 
same  sort  and  the  very  word  elf  may  be  Celtic.  The  Celtic 
Mothers  are  domiciled  on  German  ground  and  it  is  not  cer- 
tain how  many  goddesses  regarded  as  Teutonic  may  have 
been  Celtic.  In  general,  west  of  the  Rhine  early  religious 
phenomena  are  as  likely  to  be  Celtic  as  Germanic. 

Teutonic  religion  is  Germanic  and  Scandinavian,  the  lat- 
ter in  general  being  recorded  later.  At  the  beginning  of  our 
era  we  know  only  of  Germanic  religion.  At  this  time  the 
Germans  stood  in  culture  below  the  Celts,  having,  for  exam- 
ple, no  deity  corresponding  to  the  Celtic  "  Minerva,"  as 
they  were  also  inferior  politically.  On  the  eastern  border 
the  Germans  appear  to  have  surpassed  the  Slavs,  from  whom 
the  Scandinavians  seem  to  have  borrowed  religious  ele- 
ments, as  the  Germans  may  have  inherited  from  the  Finns 
magical  lore  and  possibly  some  mythological  figures. 

The  Germans  were  always  notorious  for  their  superstition, 
egotism,  and  tribal  self-centredness,1  characteristics  which 
affected  belief  and  outward  form  of  religion.  Till  the  eighth 
century  they  remained  a  barbarous,  almost  savage,  people 
Yet  some  tribes  were  superior  to  others.  Thus,  as  Plutarch 

1  Georg  Grupp,  Kultur  der  alien  Kelten  und  Germanen,  Munich, 
1905,  p. 

149 


150  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

says  that  the  Celts  were  nobler  than  the  Germans,  so  Taci- 
tus says  that  the  noblest  of  the  Germans  were  those  (Chauci) 
who  afterwards  settled  in  Kent  and  Northumbria.  In  Ger- 
many itself  there  were  three  general  groups,  the  Ingaevones 
on  the  north  littoral,  the  Istaevones  or  western  Rhinelanders, 
and  the  middle-southern  Suabians.  From  the  first  group 
came  the  Saxons  and  Angles,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Elbe  and 
on  the  Cimbrian  peninsula  and  in  Schleswig.  These  fore- 
fathers of  the  English  were  already  worshipping  gods  of 
peace  and  trade  while  the  middle  and  southern  Germans 
were  still  worshipping  war-gods.  The  Germans  had  few 
kings,  chiefly  in  the  east,  but  lived  as  mutually  hostile  demo- 
cratic tribes;  continental  Saxons  had  no  kings.  Hence 
they  had  no  general  head  of  the  pantheon ;  their  gods  were 
like  their  chiefs,  each  of  importance  in  his  own  district,  per- 
haps respected  outside  of  it  but  there  inferior  to  the  local 
powers. 

The  Germans  were  not  priest-ridden  like  the  Celts ;  but 
they  were  as  awed  by  wise  women  as  the  Celts  were  by 
Druids.  They  had,  however,  certain  priests,  whose  duties 
were  largely  political,  though  they  saw  to  divination  and  re- 
ligious processions.  Thus  as  political  headmen  these  priests 
presided  over  legislative  assemblies  and  punished  criminals. 
But  the  chief  inspirer  of  the  "  secret  something  "  was  the 
sibyl  or  wizardess,  who  was  often  regarded  as  a  goddess. 
She  gave  prophecies,  inspired  councils,  and  was  generally 
feared.  Women  anyway,  as  described  by  Tacitus,  held  a 
high  position ;  girls  were  expected  to  be  chaste ;  wives  faith- 
ful to  their  husbands  (under  rather  severe  penalties). 
When  the  husband's  body  was  burned,  the  good  wife  might 
die  with  her  lord.  So  Brynhild  says :  "  Make  a  pyre  for 
the  Hun,  my  husband,  and  for  them  dying  with  him ;  cover 
it  with  human  blood  and  burn  me  there."  Among  the 
Wends  the  wife  was  burned  with  the  husband  as  late  as  745 
A.  D.,  and  this  rite  was  doubtless  usual  among  the  early 
Germans,  as  it  was  among  the  Celts  and  Scythians.  Ship- 
burial,  with  burning,  was  a  Norse  custom,  illustrated  in  leg- 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  I51 

end  by  the  burning  of  the  good  Balder  in  his  ship  with  his 
wife  Nanna.  Horses  and  men  were  burned  or,  later,  buried 
with  chiefs,  the  practice  implying  a  belief  in  a  life  hereafter. 

According  to  Tacitus,  German  gods  were  not  represented 
by  images  and  the  only  temples  were  groves.  Probably  the 
sacrifice  consisted  at  first  in  the  victim  being  hung  on  a  tree 
in  the  sacred  grove.  Effigies  and  symbols  of  the  gods  were 
used,  however,  and  in  the  north  there  were  temples  as  well 
as  images.  In  the  Suabian  country  was  revered  "  Isis,"  a 
ship-goddess  (called  Isis,  who  had  a  remigium,  for  that  rea- 
son), and  the  northern  islanders  worshipped  the  Mother  of 
Gods  called  Nerthus.  She  was  carried  about  in  a  wagon 
drawn  by  cattle  and  then  bathed  by  slaves  who  were  at  once 
drowned.  A  similar  cult  of  this  Mother  is  recorded  of  the 
Esthonians  (Aestii),  whom  Tacitus  regards  as  German,  to- 
gether with  a  cult  of  the  wild  boar  (as  in  the  Freyr  cult). 
All  the  Germans  descend,  according  to  the  tradition  known 
to  Tacitus,  from  an  earth-god  Tuisto  and  his  son,  the  first 
Man  (Mannus),  ancestor  of  the  three  tribal  fathers.  Apart 
from  the  goddesses  just  mentioned  and  a  certain  Tarn f ana, 
goddess  of  the  Marsi,  who  was  a  deity  of  harvest  fruitful- 
ness  (she  was  accompanied  by  a  dog),  and  another  later 
known,  perhaps  Slavic,  Nehalennia,  worshipped  in  the  pres- 
ent Netherlands,  the  chief  deities  recognized  by  the  Ger- 
mans were,  according  to  Caesar,  Sun,  Moon,  and  Fire,  but, 
according  to  Tacitus,  "  Mercury,  Hercules,  and  Mars." 

Caesar's  account  leaves  much  to  be  desired,  but  it  cannot 
be  due  to  a  confusion  between  Celts  and  Germans ;  for,  after 
discussing  the  former,  he  says,  antithetically :  "  The  Ger- 
mans have  no  Druids  to  preside  over  religious  matters,  nor 
do  they  care  much  for  sacrifices.  They  reckon  as  gods  only 
such  as  they  can  perceive  and  those  by  whose  help  they  are 
clearly  aided,  Sun,  Fire,  Moon;  other  gods  they  will  not 
accept  even  when  told  of  them.  Their  whole  life  consists 
in  hunting  and  fighting.  .  .  .  They  do  not  care  for  agricul- 
ture, living  for  the  most  part  on  milk,  cheese,  and  meat.  . 
They  think  it  wicked  to  violate  hospitality."  In  later  legend 


152  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  usage  there  seems  to  linger  some  remaining  fire-cult. 
Milk  cast  on  a  bonfire  serves  as  a  sort  of  sacrifice  and  the 
fire  of  the  smithy  was  probably  revered,  as  was  the  smith. 
Way  land  the  Smith  was  son  of  a  giant  and  grandson  of  a 
mermaid.1  Sacrifice  to  fire  was  common,  as  it  is  expressly 
forbidden  by  Anglo-Saxon  law.  These  are  late  records  and 
a  race  averse  to  agriculture  does  not  pay  much  attention  to 
the  fire-cult  or  sun-cult  involved  in  the  observance  of  land- 
purification  to  induce  fertility,  a  heathenish  custom  forbidden 
in  the  eighth  century ;  so  that  the  fire-cult  of  Caesar's  record 
remains  unexplained.  But  it  may  be  due  partly  to  the  com- 
mon use  of  fire  in  ordeals,  such  as  entering  flame  or  boiling 
water.2  There  is  also  a  belief  in  flames  as  ghosts  in 
churchyards.  But  the  magical  fire-ceremonies  grouped 
about  the  idea  of  productivity  and  purgation  perhaps  imply 
riddance  of  evil  spirits  and  contain  enough  use  of  fire  as  a 
mysterious  power  to  enable  an  outsider  to  call  them  sacri- 
fices to  fire.  The  later  ritual  occurred  at  midsummer,  St. 
John's  day  (July  24),  St.  Martin's  (Nov.  10),  Walpurgis 
Night  (May  i),  and  especially  at  the  time  of  the  winter 
solstice  and  "  Twelfth  Night,"  when  evil  spirits  and  ghosts 
were  particularly  active.  In  the  north  there  were  the  three 
annual  festivals  of  sowing,  victory  (in  spring),  and  harvest.3 
Fires  were  built  on  the  hills  and  fiery  wheels  were  rolled 
about  as  a  means  of  purgation  and  of  divination,  the 
torches  representing  lightning,  etc.  Bonfires  were  built  in 
which  to  burn  effigies  of  evil  spirits.  From  the  smoke  omens 
were  taken.  People  danced  about  the  fire.  In  such  a  fire  or 

1  Forged   weapons   were   sentient,   would    not   work   unless   they 
wished,  quasi  divine  beings.     As  late  as  358  A.  D.  the  German  Qnadi 
"worshipped  their  swords,"  but  probably  only  as  a  symbol  of  the 
war-god. 

2  Water  alone  (ordeal  by  drowning)  and  blood,  indicating  a  mur- 
derer, are  also  early  ordeals,  later  supposed  to  indicate  a  judgment 
of  God. 

3  There  was  also  at  Upsala  in  the  middle  ages  a  hekatomb  at  the 
feast   of    the   nine-year    cycle,    in    mid-winter.     It    is    questionable 
whether  the   autumn   festival   was   originally   a    festival   of   plenty 
(harvest)  or,  as  in  England,  a  feast  of  the  dead. 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  153 

in  the  so-called  "  need-fire,"  especially  kindled  by  friction,  lay 
a  means  of  purgation;  people  and  cattle  leaped  through  it. 
Sacrifice  of  animals  was  made  to  the  gods  at  such  times  and 
the  image  of  god  or  goddess  was  driven  about  the  fields. 
The  need-fire  or  "sacrilegious"  fire  (so  called  by  Chris- 
tians) was  particularly  a  fire  of  magical  or  religious  import, 
to  expel  demons.  The  Anglo-Saxon  "  Mothers'  night " 
(Christmas  Eve)  was  celebrated  with  animal  masks,  appar- 
ently a  ghost-ceremony.  In  Scandinavia,  men,  in  dire  cases 
kings,  were  burned  as  a  sacrifice  to  avert  famine  in  honour 
of  Odhin.  The  frequent  mention  of  the  circular  dance  in 
connection  with  music  and  processional  celebrations  seems  to 
look  to  solar  magic ;  but  there  is  doubtless  in  all  these  rites 
the  recognition  of  a  divine  power  in  fire  also.  It  is  another 
question  how  old  these  rites  are  and  whether  they  may  be 
referred  to  a  remoter  antiquity  than  that  in  which  they  are 
known  to  occur.  They  go  back  at  least  to  the  first  centuries 
of  our  era  and  may  of  course  be  much  older.1  A  cult  of  fire 
may  be  the  base  of  the  Yule  log  rite  which  preserves  the  old 
god ;  but  is  it  a  god  that  is  preserved  ?  The  Yule  ceremony 
is  not  a  general  German  rite,  but  Scandinavian,  and  not  early 
(about  the  ninth  century).  Any  magic  practices  with  fire 
may  easily  have  been  interpreted  as  a  cult.  The  Germans, 
like  their  neighbours,  were  devoted  to  all  forms  of  magic 
and  it  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  they  learned  them  all 
from  the  Finns,  who,  however,  were  noted  magicians. 
Divination  was  common  by  means  of  lots,  the  neighing  of 
white  horses,  a  Greek  and  Persian  belief,  the  flight  and 
sound  of  birds,  flow  of  blood,  dreams,  accidental  meetings, 
single  combats,  to  decide  a  battle,  etc.  The  smoke  of  fire 
was  also  ominous.  All  these,  however,  showed  merely  the 
will  of  the  gods.  That  such  was  the  native  interpretation  is 
evident  from  the  fact  that  the  earliest  diviner  "  looks  to 
Heaven  "  as  he  draws  the  lots  and  invokes  the  gods.  The 
chief  use  of  fire  in  connection  with  acknowledged  magic, 

1  Mannhardt   regards   them   as   pre-Aryan   or   European,    funda- 
mentally the  same  in  Greece,  Germany,  etc. 


154  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

especially  in  connection  with  the  magic  supposed  to  have 
been  borrowed  from  the  Finns,  was  to  burn  the  magicians. 
The  Sun  and  Moon  cannot  be  identified  with  the  names 
of  German  gods.  The  Norse  Balder  (lord)  is  a  poetical 
figure,  who  may  reflect  a  solar  or  year  myth ;  as  the  northern 
Heimdall,  god  of  light  and  beginnings,  who  can  hear  all 
things  and  whose  trump  like  Gabriel's  wakes  the  dead  at  the 
end  of  the  world,  the  guardian  of  the  bridge  to  heaven,  and 
contender  every  day  with  Loki  for  possession  of  the  jewelled 
necklace  called  Brisingamen,  is  possibly  a  representative  of 
daily  sun-light.  Loki  or  Logi  (fire)  or  Lodhur  x  (heat)  as 
"  ender,"  though  blood-brother  of  Odhin,  may  be  the  subter- 
ranean fire  that  will  end  the  world;  but  this  Scandinavian 
local  mythology  is  inconclusive;  no  cult  of  these  gods  is 
known.2  So  it  is  only  in  later  Scandinavian  story  that  we 
hear  of  Mundilfoeri,  father  of  sun  and  moon,  and  of  the 
wolves  that  cause  eclipses.  The  moon  was  believed  to 
affect  vegetation  3  and  worship  of  sun,  moon,  and  fire  is  con- 
demned by  missionaries ;  but  all  this  testimony  is  late.  We 
have  indeed  the  precise  statement  in  later  accounts  that  the 
Germans  or  Franks  worshipped  sun  and  moon.  They  are  so 
mythologically  represented  in  a  charm,  perhaps  of  the  eighth 
century,  as  healers,  Sinthgut  and  Sunna,  two  sisters. 
This,  however,  may  be  a  cue  to  the  real  state  of  the  case. 
The  sun  is  feminine  and  would  be  represented  not  as  a  god 
but  a  goddess.  As  such  she  may  have  been  one  of  the  fer- 

1  Gentle  Balder,  like  Adonis,  is  famous  only  because  he  died ;  he 
may  be  a  Danish  vestige  of  Caesar's  Sol.    Loki  is  god  and  yet  be- 
longs  to   the   giants.     He   is    subterranean    (fire    as    ender    of   the 
world)    or  Logi,   fire,   who   causes    Balder's    death,   and   has   been 
identified    with    a    Requalivahanus,    worshipped    near    Cologne,    as 
"  darkness."    Loki  is   father  of  Hel  and  of  the  Midhgardh  snake. 
He  may  retain  the  nature  of  Caesar's  Volcanus. 

2  The  lateness  of  Walhalla  and  other  Norse  conceptions  must  not 
blind  us  to  the  fact  that  many  Norse  elements  are  old.     Balder  and 
Odhin  and  Loki  revert  to  the  seventh  century  at  least.     Balder  may 
still  be  a  form  of  spring  or  of  sun ;  either,  rather  than  a  former  man. 

3  But  our  German  Pennsylvanian  farmers  "  plant  by  the  moon," 
still  believing  in  its  potency  as  affecting  vegetation;  this  common 
(even  Scriptural)  notion  does  not  imply  a  divine  moon. 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  155 

tility-goddesses  who  are  mentioned  by  Tacitus  or  one  of  the 
numerous  goddesses  of  whom  only  the  names  survive,  such 
as  Sandraudiga,  Hludana,  Haeva,  etc.,  from  the  Nether- 
lands and  Friesland.  The  names  of  days  of  the  week  are 
drawn  from  outside  and  indicate  no  Germanic  Sun  and 
Moon  days. 

The  chief  gods  mentioned  by  Tacitus  ("  Mercury,  Her- 
cules, and  Mars ")  can  be  identified  with  Woden,  Thor, 
and  Ziu,  not  only  through  the  identity  of  the  week-day  names, 
Wednesday- Mercredi,  etc.,  but  through  their  characteristics. 
These  gods  were  not,  however,  worshipped  everywhere  with 
like  fervour.  Thor  is  Norse  and  his  Germanic  counterpart 
Donar  is  a  much  less  important  figure.  Again  Ziu  (Zio)  or 
Tiu  is  probably  a  decadent  god  of  "the  sky.  Woden  is  so 
much  a  god  of  the  dead  that  he  might  easily  have  escaped 
Caesar's  notice.  There  is  therefore  no  real  contradiction 
in  the  seeming  incongruity  of  the  pantheon  presented  by 
Caesar  and  Tacitus.  That  the  two  accounts  are  a  century 
apart  and  that  in  the  meantime  the  Germans  had  become 
more  civilized  is  not  of  moment.  National  or  tribal  gods 
do  not  die  so  quickly  and  the  Germans  were  little  less  bar- 
barous in  the  first  century  A.  D.  than  in  the  first  century  B.  c. 

Of  the  group  in  Tacitus,  Mars  is  the  oldest  and  hence 
least  important.  He  was  worshipped,  especially  by  the  Sua- 
bians  who  were  called  Ziuwari  (in  part  identical  with  the 
Herminones),  as  a  sky-god  in  the  guise  of  a  tribal  ancestor 
called  Er,  Irmin  (as  he  was  also  called  Saxneat,  sword- 
companion,  by  the  Saxons).  The  ordinary  form  of  the 
god's  name  is  German  Tiu,  Ziu,  Scandinavian  Tyr,  English 
Tiw  (Tuesday),  with  the  Frisian  variant  Din  (Dienstag). 
With  the  title  Saxneat  or  Saxnot  compare  the  battle-cry, 
"On  Saxons,  seize  your  saxas  "  (cleavers,  stone-weapons). 
The  god  is  the  old  battle-god,  hence  called  Mars  by  the 
Romans,  but  at  the  same  time  he  is  the  "  regnator  omnium 
deus,"  who,  Tacitus  says,  was  worshipped  by  the  chief  tribe 
of  the  Suabians  in  a  sacred  grove  and  to  whom  were  made 
human  sacrifices.  Thus,  even  if  Ziu-Tiu  is  not  one  with 


156  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Zeus,  phonetically,  the  god  is  the  same,  and  probably,  as 
proper  religious  names  do  not  always  conform  to  the  strict 
law  of  phonetics,  the  names  also  are  one.  He  was,  in  the 
opinion  of  many  scholars,  the  original  chief  god  of  the  Teu- 
tons, displaced  by  Woden.  He  is  not  important  in  Norse 
mythology,  though  well  known  as  a  god  who  has  lost  one 
hand,  like  Nuada,  in  contest  with  the  wolf  Fenrir  (i.  e. 
eclipse?).  He  is,  historically,  by  no  means  the  chief  Teu- 
tonic god,  yet  he  is  found  worshipped  everywhere,  chiefly  in 
the  northern  and  central  parts  of  Germany.  Rams  are  sac- 
rificed to  him.  The  existence  of  a  Ziesberg  shows  that  he 
was  worshipped  on  the  heights  as  well  as  in  sacred  groves. 
As  ruler  of  all,  and  the  sky-god  to  whom  the  priest  looks  in 
divinations  (above),  he  may  well  be  regarded  as  war-god  of 
tribes  whose  main  business  was  fighting.  As  Tig  he  is  iden- 
tified with  Mars  as  late  as  the  seventh  century.  Thus  as 
sword-god  he  may  have  been  worshipped  with  the  sword- 
dance  which  Tacitus  regards  as  a  sport.  He  was  introduced 
into  England  as  Mars  Thingsus,  god  of  the  assembly,  by 
Frisian  soldiers  (222  A.  D.),  but  adventitiously,  and  as  tribal 
god  it  is  questionable  whether  he  gave  or  received  the  tribal 
name.1  He  appears  as  a  royal  ancestral  lord  of  the  Saxons 
in  Essex  and  Wessex. 

Of  the  three  chief  gods,  Thor,  Odhin,  and  Freyr,  of 
Sweden,  Odhin  represents  the  German  Woden  (Wuotan), 
who  is  the  Mercury  of  Tacitus.  He  may  have  been  at  first 
the  god  of  the  Istaevones,  Rhinelanders  and  those  afterwards 
called  Franks  from  south  and  middle  Germany.  He  was 
apparently,  not  certainly,  little  regarded,  though  he  was 
known,  among  the  Alemanni  and  Bavarians  and  southern 
Suabians.  The  Suabians  of  middle  Germany  worshipped 
both  Tiu  and  Woden;  but  in  the  south  it  is  significant  that 
Woden's  day  was  not  called  thus  but  was  known  as  Mitt- 

1  It  is  noticeable  that  no  German  tribes  have  names  of  animals  or 
vegetables  implying  totemism.  Images  of  wild  beasts,  ferarum 
imagines,  carried  by  warriors,  are  mentioned  by  Tacitus  (Hist,  iv, 
22),  probably  the  effigies  and  signa  already  referred  to,  such  as 
Woden's  wolf,  Tiu's  ram,  and  Donar's  hammer. 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  157 

woch.  He  was  known  as  Godan  among  the  northern  Longo- 
bards,  about  the  mouth  of  the  Elbe,  and  was  prominent 
among  Saxons,  Anglo-Saxons,  and  Frisians,  the  last  wor- 
shipping him  particularly  with  his  wife  (here  Fria)  and  his 
"sons"  Thuner  (Thor)  and  Tiu  as  late  as  the  eighth  to 
eleventh  centuries.  Charles  the  Great  in  the  eighth  century 
suppressed  the  worship  of  Woden  among  the  Saxons  only  by 
merciless  rapine  and  slaughter.  As  Odhin  he  stands  in  the 
middle  of  the  Norse  triad,  but  here,  in  Scandinavia,  Odhin  is 
an  aristocratic  court-god  as  contrasted  with  Thor,  the  god  of 
the  common  people.  Altogether,  Woden,  as  Tacitus  states, 
was  the  most  generally  worshipped  German  god. 

Woden  means  wind  (Wode  is  a  storm-demon)  and  is  par- 
ticularly the  god  who  rushes  along  with  the  Wild  Hunt  of 
souls,  to  whom  he  is  psychopomp  (hence  as  "  Mercury"). 
As  god  of  souls  he  is  also  an  ancestral  god,  while  again  as 
wind-god  he  brings  both  good  and  harm  to  cattle  and  crops, 
but  at  the  same  time  as  storm-god  he  is  god  of  the  storming 
host  of  battle.  He  is  in  many  ways  a  parallel  to  the  Hindu 
Indra,  god  of  storms  and  battle  and  fertility.  Odhin,  like 
Indra,  who  "  wanders  "  and  recommends  wandering  as  a 
cure  for  sin,  is  the  "  noisy  wanderer,"  6ml  gangleri,  but  also 
a  war-god  to  whom  warriors  come  for  help  and  who  receives 
them  into  his  heaven ;  in  Longobard  tradition  he  even  be- 
comes a  sky-god,  as  did  Indra.  Human  sacrifices  were\ 
made  to  Woden  as  war-god  and  to  Odhin  as  war-  and  > 
heaven-god.  But  owing  to  outside  influence  Odhin  is  ex- 
alted as  lord  of  the  Hall  of  the  Dead  (Walhalla),  the  very 
wise  magic-knowing  god  of  the  court-poets  (scalds). 
Versed  in  Runes,  he  speaks  with  the  head  of  Mimir  (spirit 
of  water  and  wit),  a  poet  by  virtue  of  the  mead  made  of 
honey  mixed  with  the  spittle  of  gods  (in  the  form  of  Kvasir, 
perhaps  a  Slavic  myth),  lord  of  the  gallows,  his  steed,  teacher 
of  battle-formations,  and,  finally,  as  an  All-father  (Christian 
influence),  the  highest  sky-god,  creator  and  director  of  the 
world.  He  gives  wealth,  victory,  eloquence,  wisdom,  valor, 
and  "a  fair  wind  to  sailors/'  At  the  same  time  in  this 


158  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Norse  tradition  he  is  a  sort  of  superman  who  has  come 
from  Asgardh  (here  on  the  Black  Sea)  as  a  man  and  human 
king,  brother  of  Veli  and  Ve.  All  this  Scandinavian  myth- 
ology, however,  is  so  mixed  with  classical,  Slavic,  and  Chris- 
tian elements  that  it  throws  a  confused  light  on  original 
•Germanic  conceptions,  as  these  are  accidentally  preserved  in 
the  mass  of  foreign  accretions  and  later  local  ideas.  Odhin 
the  All-father  is  here,  like  Zeus,  a  god  of  amours  and  meta- 
morphoses.1 

In  Germany,  the  deep-seated  nature  of  the  Woden-cult 
may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  as  late  as  the  eighth  cen- 
tury German  (Roman  Catholic)  priests,  professing  to  be 
Christians,  were  still  attending  his  festivals  and  actually 
making  sacrifices  to  Wuotan.  In  the  sixth  century  "  Woden 
rewards  faithfulness  "  is  still  a  religious  motto.  Beer  was 
acceptable  as  a  sacrifice  to  this  god  in  later  times,  as  horses 
and  men  were  given  to  him  in  antiquity.  Many  tree-sacri- 
fices belong  to  him  as  tree-god.  Both  as  Woden  and  Odhin 
/  the  god  rides  a  grey  horse  and  wears  a  cloak  and  hat,  but 
Odhin  only  (as  the  price  of  Mimir's  wit)  has  but  one  eye. 
As  Mercury,  the  "  giant  Woden  "  invents  Runes  in  later  Ger- 
man tradition.  The  normal  antique  German  weapon  was 
not  a  sword  but  a  spear  and  this  is  his  weapon.  Wolves  and 
ravens  presaging  victory  are  Odhin's  animals. 

As  medicus  a  German  charm  makes  Woden  the  chief  phy- 
sician, curer  of  the  ills  he  sends  (compare  Apollo),  and  so, 
in  an  Anglo-Saxon  charm,  Woden  "  takes  nine  wonder- 
twigs/'  with  them  smites  the  adder,  "  and  in  nine  it  flew." 
As  another  parallel  with  Indra  may  be  mentioned  that  as  late 
as  1593  ears  of  harvest  corn  are  left  for  Woden's  horse.2 
Groves  (cf.  Odenwald)  and  trees  are  sacred  to  him  and  as 
god  of  fertility  his  day  (Wednesday)  was  and  still  is  con- 
sidered by  the  pious  German  farmer  as  the  best  day  for  sow- 

1A11  the  gods,  however,  assume  all  forms,  especially  those  of 
animals,  birds  and  insects  (as  in  the  forms  taken  by  Loki). 

2  In  the  Rig  Veda,  the  corn  offered  Indra  is  said  to  be  for  his 
horses. 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  159 

ing  and  planting,  though  otherwise  unlucky  as  being  the  day 
of  the  god  of  the  dead.1 

In  connexion  with  the  Norse  god  only  is  there  the  "  home 
of  joy,"  Gladhsheimr,  in  which  Walhalla  is  situated.  There 
heroes  meet  to  drink  from  cups  offered  them  by  the  Wal- 
kyries,  maids  who  elect  them  that  are  to  die  and  then  wait  on 
them  in  heaven.  A  wolf  hangs  before  the  door;  over  the 
Hall  hovers  an  eagle ;  its  roof  and  walls  are  made  of  spears 
and  shields  and  there  Odhin  sits,  rejoicing  most  over  him 
who  has  killed  most.  It  is  noteworthy  that  these  poetic 
Scandinavian  gods  have  no  inherent  powers.  Odhin  sees 
all  because  of  his  throne.  If  another  sits  there,  the  other 
can  see  as  well.  Thor's  strength  depends  on  his  hammer. 
Wisdom  divine  is  in  Odhin,  but  it  is  due  to  the  magic  ring 
of  the  dwarfs,  which  he  wears.  The  gods  are  ever  youth- 
ful only  because  they  have  the  apples  of  Idhunn,  etc.  As 
has  been  said :  "  Similar  conceptions  are  met  with  in  vari- 
ous mythologies,  but  this  dependent  nature  of  the  gods  re- 
ceives especial  emphasis  in  Norse  mythology.  Not  to  their 
own  nature  as  such,  but  to  external  conditions,  do  the  gods 
owe  their  power."  2 

The  third  great  god  of  the  ancient  Teutons  is  Thor, 
especially  honoured  in  Norway  and  Iceland,  not  so  promi- 
nent, as  Donar,  in  Germany ;  in  Anglo-Saxon  he  is  Thunor, 
whose  day  is  regarded  as  dies  Jovis  (Thursday).  He 
was  reckoned  a  Hercules  by  Tacitus,  possibly  because  his 
thunderbolt  resembled  the  club  of  the  Greek  hero,  but  per- 

1  Some  scholars  identify  with  Woden  the  god  Henno  (Death) 
of  the  mediaeval  oath  "By  Henno"  and  the  Hiinen  (the  dead). 
Does  our  rustic  oath  "by  hen"  retain  this  word?  Based  on  this 
Henno  it  has  been  urged  that  Woden  was  primarily  a  god  of  the 
dead  (chthonic  divinity),  but  this  seems  improbable. 

2De  la  Saussaye,  Religion  of  the  Teutons,  Boston,  1902,  p.  286. 
The  author  here  calls  attention  to  the  groups  of  gods,  three  or 
more.  There  is  no  original  group  of  twelve  German  gods.  Idhunn 
(above)  has  the  apples  of  youth  and  is  wife  of  Bragi,  god  of 
poetry.  A  good  example  of  a  stupid  god  is  Hoenir,  who  has  to 
be  companioned  by  the  clever  Mimir,  and  when  asked  his  opinion 
always  says  "  Let  others  advise." 


l6o  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

haps  also  because  he  was  extolled  as  "  bravest  of  men  "  in 
battle,  a  position  due  to  his  being  an  eponymous  hero.  In 
Norway  and  Sweden  and  Friesland,  where  Thursday  is 
Thunor's  day,  he  is  a  god  of  the  people  as  contrasted  with 
the  aristocratic  Odhin,  who  is  warlike  and  amorous  while 
Thor  is  home-loving  and  domestic. 

The  reason  for  this  change  of  character  lies  in  the  fact 
that,  with  the  aristocracy,  Odhin  usurped  the  function  of 
Thor  as  fighter,  leaving  to  him  his  other  attributes  of  thun- 
der-god as  a  beneficent  deity  of  productiveness.  This  again 
reverts  to  the  fact  that  when  thunder  is  first  heard  in  the 
northern  spring,  it  indicates  the  breaking  up  of  winter,  re- 
lease from  the  giants  of  cold  and  ice,  the  victory  of  spring 
over  winter,  of  fertility  over  barrenness.  The  battle  of  the 
Norse  Thor  is  thus  a  nature-contest  and  the  farmer  and 
sailor  have  especial  interest  in  him  rather  than  in  the  battle- 
god.  So  enduring  is  this  conception  of  Thor  that  it  is 
matter  of  record  that  prayers  were  offered  to  him  as  a  fer- 
tility-god as  late  as  the  eighteenth  century.  As  in  India 
plants  were  named  after  Indra,  the  god  of  thunder  and  fer- 
tility, so  plants  were  named  after  Thor,  as  thunderer. 
Hence  too  the  notion,  quite  opposed  to  classical  tradition, 
that  a  "  thunder-riven  "  tree  is  a  tree  marked  out  for  divine 
favour,  the  wood  of  which  was  curative.  The  oak  is  espe- 
cially Thor's  tree  and  as  late  as  730  A.  D.  such  an  oak  was 
formally  hewn  down  as  a  defiance  to  his  worshippers  by  a 
doughty  missionary,  who  built  a  Christian  church  from  its 
timbers.  Thor  presided  over  agriculture. 

Many  mediaeval  superstitions  go  back  to  the  belief  in 
Thor's  fertility.  Thus  Thursday  is  lucky  for  weddings  and 
his  hammer  "  hallowed  "  the  bride,  as  it  was  a  symbol  of  fer- 
tility. He  was  also  guardian  of  law.  The  day  of  public 
meetings  was  Thor's  day  and  his  hammer  marked  the  bounds 
of  the  court.  His  influence  in  the  north  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  place-names  are  his  more  than  any  other  god's.  His 
face  also,  long-bearded,  is  carved  on  rocks  and  served  in 
effigy  as  guardian  power  of  many  ships.  His  temple  was 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  l6l 

where  the  Thing  or  legislative  assembly  was  held.  Emi- 
grants carried  him  to  Iceland,  where  one  Rolf,  renamed 
Thor-rolf,  built  him  a  temple  out  of  wood  transported  from 
Rolf's  old  home  in  Norway.  His  power  was  great  in  Swe- 
den (not  so  great  in  Denmark),  where  he  was  regarded  as 
ruler  of  the  air,  storm,  lightning,  and  crops.  The  ancient 
saying,  "  Odhin  has  warriors,  Thor  has  thralls,"  betrays  his 
country  popularity.  It  was  to  the  professional  fighting  of 
the  robber  barons  and  Vikings  that  Thor  was  opposed.  A 
winter  sacrifice  was  made  to  him  in  hope  of  the  next  year's 
f ruitfulness.  He  alone  overcomes  Loki  and  his  main  task  is 
to  fight  and  overcome  the  Joten,  Anglo-Saxon  Eoten,  Ent, 
or  giants,  who  in  some  cases  are  brothers  of  the  dwarfs,  in 
others  independent  beings  of  earth. 

Many  beliefs  current  in  regard  to  Thor  show  his  nature, 
his  red  hair,  like  red  lightning,  his  epithet  Hlorridhi, 
"  roarer,"  his  goat-cart,  like  the  team  of  Pushan,  the  Hindu 
fertility-god,  and  his  play  of  ninepins  with  the  gods  (the 
sound  as  of  thunder;  cf.  Rip  Van  Winkle).  His  gauntlets 
indicate  strength.  His  girdle  retains  his  power.  His  ham- 
mer when  thrown  returns  to  his  hand.  His  daughter  is 
Thrudhr,  power,  his  sons  are  Modhi,  vehemence,  and  Magni, 
power  (compare  the  north  German  Magusanus  Hercules). 
In  the  world-drama  of  the  North  his  nature  has  been  some- 
what modified  by  poet  or  priest.  He  is  regarded  as  son  of 
Odhin  in  Norse  mythology  and  his  mother  is  sometimes 
called  Jordh,  Earth.  He  has  other  "  mothers,"  but  neither 
they  nor  Sif  (sheaf) ,  his  wife,  have  a  cult.  But  it  is  possible 
that  some  nature-myth  is  kept  in  the  story  that  the  malicious 
Loki  cut  off  Sif's  hair  and  Thor  compelled  him  to  make 
new  "golden  hair"  for  her  with  the  help  of  the  dwarfs. 
This  hair  has  been  not  unreasonably  interpreted  as  the  sheaf 
of  golden  grain.1  In  general,  Thor  is  a  nature-god  whose 

1The  son  of  Sif  is  Ullr,  god  of  bows,  hunt,  and  skates,  who  may 
be  connected  with  the  Frisian  hell-god  Holler.  Hel  is  a  place  (the 
grave)  scarcely  personified  at  first,  then  becoming  the  daughter  of 
Loki,  the  subterranean  god.  Balder,  slain  by  Loki,  has  now  joined 
Osiris  and  Shiva  in  the  modern  procession  of  "  gods  who  were  men." 


162  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

later  higher   activities   may   have   been   affected   by   outer 
(Christian)  influences. 

Wholly  Norse  is  the  cult  of  the  "  Lord  "  (Freyr),  brother 
of  the  "Lady"  (Freyja),  who  like  Baels  are  known  only 
by  their  titles.  The  two  are  replicas,  the  male  probably  later 
than  the  female,  whose  relation  to  Nyord,  the  "  father  "  of 
the  pair,  connects  them  with  the  mater  deum  Nerthus 
(above).  Nyord  rules  wind  and  sea  and  lives  in  Noatun 
(place  of  ships)  as  husband  of  Skadhi  (perhaps  Finnish), 
daughter  of  the  giant  Thyazi.  Adam  of  Bremen  is  quite 
precise  as  to  Freyr,  whom  he  calls  Fricon;  the  god  is  one 
of  peace  and  pleasure  and  plenty,  symbolized  by  the  phallic 
emblem.1  He  and  his  "sister"  and  Nyord  (Njordhr)  and 
Nerthus  constitute  a  group  of  Vanir  gods  as  opposed  to  the 
As(aesir)  gods.  Productivity  is  the  kernel  of  the  Van  or 
Venus  group,  as  destruction  is  the  kernel  of  the  As  (cf. 
Asura)  group.  The  latter  are  not  chthonic  in  antithesis  to 
the  Vanir  as  "  light-gods,"  nor  are  the  Vanir  gods  Slavic. 
They  simply  represent  a  phase  which  waxed  in  civilization 
and  religion,  while  the  destructive  phase  waned.  Thus  the 
early  female  gods  of  fertility  are  represented  by  Freyja;  the 
patriarchal  society  by  the  tendency  to  make  her  into  a  male ; 
the  connexion  between  peace  and  trade  by  the  localization 
of  the  later  cult  in  the  north;  and  the  phallic  element,  al- 
ways latent,  by  the  remodelling  of  Freyja  by  the  scalds  on 
the  lines  of  the  classical  Venus,  with  whom  they  were  well 
acquainted.  Eventually  one  may  perhaps  identify  Venus,  in 
Freyja  form,  with  Frija  or  Frigg,  wife  of  Tiu  and  then  of 
Woden,  probably  originally  a  Father  Heaven  and  Mother 
Earth  pair.  Freyr  was  carried  from  the  Ingaevones  on  the 
north  littoral  to  Sweden,  where  he  grew  so  prominent  that 
he  was  made  one  of  the  national  triad  with  Odhin  and 

Yet  thus   far  this  assumed   derivation   lacks   not  only  proof  but, 
in  Balder's  case,  verisimilitude. 

1  Pacem  voluptatemque  largiens  mortalibus,  cuius  etiam  simul- 
acrum fingunt  ingenti  priapo;  si  nuptiae  celebrandae  sunt,  sacrificia 
offerunt  Friconi. 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  163 

Thor.  It  was  here  that  he  became  specially  an  amorous 
deity,  as  his  sister  became  mistress  of  all  the  gods.  The 
geographical  relation  is  retained  in  the  Frea  Ingvine  of  Beo- 
wulf (perhaps  as  Freyr).  The  cult  of  Freyr  is  that  of  the 
old  Nerthus:  he  has  a  spring  journey  in  a  car  and  presides 
over  fertility  and  marriage.  As  to  the  Aestian  mother 
of  gods,  the  boar  is  sacred  to  him;  men  swear  by  it,  the 
boar's  head  is  a  sign  of  fertility.  To  Freyr,  as  to  other 
gods  of  the  north,  horses  and  men  are  sacrificed.  His  sister 
is  a  woman's  goddess ;  the  cat  is  her  beast ;  dying  women  go 
to  her.  Yet  to  her  also  are  sacrificed  ox  and  boar.  She  is 
a  female  counterpart  of  her  brother  or  husband,  for,  as  it  is 
wisely  said,  "  the  Vanir  wed  their  sisters  " ;  historically  they 
are  their  sisters.  In  the  Viking  myth  the  figure  of  Freyr 
has  to  assume  more  martial  proportions  and  as  Thor  slays 
the  "  Roarer  "  giant  Beli,  so  Freyr  slays  giants,  and  indeed 
from  the  same  original  notion :  giants  of  winter  and  cold  are 
subdued  by  spring  and  heat.  Our  Friday  retains  the  name, 
perhaps  originally  indicative  of  joy  or  love.1  Other  female 
deities  of  this  sort  may  be  suspected  as  earth  or  fertility 
spirits  in  the  figures  cited  as  goddesses  of  special  tribes,  such 
as  Boduhenna  (compare  Henno,  above),  mentioned  by  Taci- 
tus (Annales,  iv.,  73)  and  the  Batavian  Nehalennia  (associ- 
ated with  "  Hercules  Magusanus  "  and  with  the  sea-god),  a 
goddess  of  fertility,  with  fruit  and  dog.  Even  the  giantess 
Gefjon,  who  ploughs  the  land,  may  be  of  this  sort,  not  to 
speak  of  the  "  true  and  happy "  goddess  Sandraudiga 
(above)  and  Vagdavergustis,  whose  name  means  "cause  of 
life-power,"  and  other  deities  whose  names  were  possi- 
bly epithets  of  Freyja  herself.  The  male  form  persists 
in  the  god  called  President  (fore-sitter,  Forsite)  of  Helgo- 
land, reputed  son  of  Balder.  Mediaeval  spirits  of  birth  and 
death  like  Holda  and  Perchta  (Bertha)  are  perhaps  inde- 
pendent later  creations.  In  general  we  may  assume  that 
the  ancient  Germans  worshipped  phenomenal  gods,2  Sun, 

l  Compare  Freund  and  Frau,  lady,  first  loved. 

2 The  gods  were  called  tivar  (cf.  deus),  "shining  ones,"  "those 


1 64  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Moon,  Fire,  Sky,  Wind,  Thunder-Storm,  and  spirits  of 
earth  or  spring  as  fertility-deities.  In  the  north  and  later 
these  gods  become  humanized,  with  familiar  forms  and  hu- 
man attributes,1  who  live  in  the  citadel  Asgardh  reached  by 
the  rainbow-bridge  Bifrost.  The  older  Germans,  instead  of 
humanizing  their  gods  thus,  deified  their  men  (ancestors). 
Yet  the  Norsemen  also  on  occasion  worshipped  kings  as 
gods.  There  was,  however,  no  fellowship,  no  communion 
with  the  gods,  nor  had  they  moral  significance,  except  as 
they  guarded  law  and  demanded  courage.  The  Scandi- 
navian cried,  "  Laughing  I  die  "  ;  thus  only  was  he  welcomed 
to  Walhalla.  A  belief  in  Fate,  the  word  of  the  Norns,  is 
general;  man  dies  as  Fate  decrees.  Yet  Walhalla  is  a  late 
conception  and  the  Norns  are  Norse  creations.  Hel  was 
the  grave,  "  concealing "  all ;  only  later  was  it  the  place 
underground  for  the  common  man,  as  opposed  to  the  Hall 
of  Odhin  for  the  warrior.  The  shipping  of  a  dead  body  to 
a  land  across  the  water  arose  in  the  north  with  sea-farers. 
In  the  belief  that  England  was  engel-land  (angel-land) 
there  is  a  faith  built  upon  folk-etymology,  which  tends  to 
define  the  Hel-land  or  Seelenland  more  closely.  Often  the 
dead,  however,  live  in  the  mountains,  or  in  springs  or  gar- 
dens. 

Whether  the  cult  of  spirits  as  ghosts  is  as  old  as  the  belief 
in  phenomenal  gods  is  not  a  question  to  be  answered  on  the 
basis  of  German  history.  All-Souls  probably  retains  such  a 
cult,  as  we  find  it  elsewhere.  The  death  at  the  grave  shows 
a  belief  in  life  to  be,  and  the  mediaeval  Woden  as  soul- 
leader  probably  points  to  the  same  fact.  The  practice  of 
bewitching  by  the  dead,  offerings  and  songs  to  the  dead, 

who  measure,"  "binders,"  etc.  The  word  god  means  "invoked." 
Culture-heroes  are  doubtful.  Beowulf  may  be  one.  Tacitus  men- 
tions a  local  cult  of  two  brothers  (Aleis)  as  Castor  and  Pollux,  but 
their  nature  is  undecided. 

l  It  is  only  here  that  we  find  a  number  of  abstract  Numina  as 
female  powers  of  one  function.  The  fact  that  they  are  all  late 
poetic  fancies  is  of  weight  in  comparing  the  Slavic  and  Roman 
Numina. 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  165 

dadsisas,  probably  precedes  prayers  for  the  dead.  Even  fer- 
tility-gods have  no  recognizable  connexion  with  the  dead. 
The  Walkyries  are  Scandinavian  parallels  of  the  (eighth 
century)  German  Idisi,  women  who  preside  over  the  fate  of 
warriors  and  they  may  themselves  be  the  "  riders  of  the 
dead  "  of  Low  German  belief.  At  any  rate,  they  correspond 
in  belief  to  the  fighting  virgins  and  matrons  in  whom,  the 
Roman  account  says,  the  Germans  saw  divinity.  They 
are  like  the  three  prophetic  Norns,  but  they  are  without 
limit  of  number ;  they  sometimes  assume  swan-forms.  The 
Norns,  like  the  Moirae  of  the  Greeks,  belong  to  the  giants. 
As  storm-spirits,  the  Walkyries  might  themselves  be  ghosts ; 
but  this  explanation  is  only  a  guess.  The  soul1  in  Norse 
belief  is  a  fylgja,  follower,  not  an  ego.  It  is  a  separate  per- 
sonality, so  that  one  may  "  stumble  upon  his  own  fylgja" 
as  it  goes  about  outside  of  one,  hence  a  Doppelgdnger.  It  is 
the  genius  which  leaves  a  dead  man  and  enters  his  son,  some- 
times even  as  a  female  spirit  admonishing  a  man.  A  night- 
mare is  a  spirit  or  ghost.  The  dead  live  as  ghosts  at  cross- 
roads or  in  animals  or  may  come  to  life  on  earth.  Metem- 
psychosis is  repudiated  as  "  old  women's  talk  " ;  but  it  was 
believed  in  old  days  in  Scandinavia  that,  as  the  result  of  a 
special  curse,  one  may  not  be  able  to  live  again  in  human 
form.  The  lower  mythology  of  mediaeval  times  shows  a 
cult  of  souls  of  the  dead,  of  witches,  ghosts,  spirits  of  trees, 
water,  springs,  rivers,  mountains,  etc.  Souls  appear  as  mice, 
snakes  (the  house-snake  as  a  Lar),  were-wolves,  or  as  trees, 
or  roses,  springing  from  the  blood  of  the  dead.  The  Norse 
berserkers  may  be  bear-clothed  spirits  like  (were-wolves) 
those  in  wolf-skins.  The  canonization  of  Christian  souls 
retains  the  old  cult  of  the  dead.  House-spirits  in  various 
forms  are  usually  dead  souls ;  but  there  is  no  basis  for  the 
theory  that  spirits  of  forest,  cave,  tree,  spring,  etc.,  are 
ghosts.  The  '*  balewise  women "  who,  as  witches,2  raise 

1  Our  "  soul,"  German  Seele,  may  mean  quick,  lively,  like  Greek 
jjios,  indicating  the  active  principle. 

2  The  wise  women  of  the  north  were  of  the  seidhr  or  volva  class. 


166  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

storms,  are  also  not  necessarily  ghosts.  Even  Fate,  Wyrd, 
becomes  a  she-demon,  and  the  peasants  "  Du  Wind,  hast 
Mehl  fur  dein  Kind  "  shows,  as  the  child  is  Wind's,  that 
storm  may  be  a  spirit  without  being  a  ghost. 

Elves  and  giants  may  revert  in  part  to  tales  of  prehistoric 
men ;  but  the  belief  in  such  beings  is  too  universal  to  refer 
the  phenomena  to  such  a  source  altogether.  Elves  are  not 
degraded,  nor  are  giants  prehistoric  gods.  Sacrifice  was 
made  to  elves  in  Norway.  They  help  men  but  also  need 
human  help.  Giants  are  stupid,  not  necessarily  hostile,  but 
generally  opposed  to  (Norse)  gods.  All  nature  is  more  or 
less  alive.  Wood-sounds  prove  a  wood-spirit.  "  Feld  hath 
eyen  and  the  wood  hath  eres  "  (Chaucer).  Definite  wor- 
ship of  streams,  stones,  and  trees  is  proved  for  the  early 
centuries  of  our  era  by  exhortation  against  these  cults.  The 
old  oath,  "  swear  by  oak  and  ash  and  thorn,"  reflects  a  belief 
in  these  trees  as  spiritual  powers.  To  whip  a  tree  or  offer 
it  beer  points  to  the  same  interpretation.  Many  such  cus- 
toms have  been  preserved  till  modern  times.  The  cult  of 
trees,  "  blood  tree,"  "  luck  tree,"  trees  giving  birth,  the 
Maypole,1  the  "  oak  of  Jupiter,"  and  even  the  world-tree, 
Yggdrasil  (Irminsul),  are  probably  older  than  specific  agri- 
cultural cults,  but  any  or  all  of  these  beliefs  may  be  echoes 
of  prehistoric  times.  Sea-spirits  naturally  belong  to  the 
North.  There  "  Sea  will  have  sacrifice  " ;  but  tamer  water- 
spirits,  water  itself  being  a  spiritual  power,  abound  every- 
where, as  springs,  and  rivers,  personified,  or  as  Nixes 

The  former  (perhaps  Finnish)  were  sorcerers;  the  latter,  sooth- 
sayers, who  "  sat  out "  till  they  got  a  revelation.  In  general,  one 
was  a  witch  and  the  other  a  sibyl.  There  were  seidh-men  as  well 
as  seidhkona,  women  (kona,  quean),  but  the  yolur  (staff-bearing, 
wanderer)  were  women,  and  sometimes  functioned  also  as  seidh- 
kona. Compare  Saussaye,  op.  cit.,  p.  389. 

i  The  Maypole  is  not  properly  a  tree,  but  represents  the  spirit  of 
vegetation  symbolized  by  the  tree,  like  Adonis'  garden,  the  Korn- 
demon  or  year-demon  as  a  vegetarian  god  in  material  form.  On  the 
identity  of  the  pole  with  the  May  queen,  see  Mannhardt,  Der  Baum- 
kultus,  Berlin,  1875,  p.  312  f.  The  world-tree  is  the  product  of  specu- 
lative fancy,  embodied  first  in  the  old  Westphalian  Irmin-pillar  sup- 
porting the  world  (universalis  columna  quasi  sustinens  omnia). 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  167 

(Nymphs)  of  a  cruel  disposition,  liable  to  appear  in  animal 
form,  and  sacrificed  to  (especially  when  a  stream  is  ob- 
structed, as  by  a  bridge),  sometimes  with  human  lives. 
Waterfalls  were  worshipped  by  the  Norsemen  and  "  cheese 
was  offered  to  a  lake  "  in  the  sixth  century.  The  belief  of 
Mannhardt  that  all  these  items  of  lower  mythology  reflect 
the  general  European  cults  of  prehistoric  times  inherited  by 
Greek  and  German  in  analogous  forms  goes  too  far.  Many 
of  them  are  individual,  tribal,  national,  separately  developed 
out  of  the  same  material.  The  clay  horses  of  a  German 
fair  today  are  like  the  prehistoric  figures  of  the  Greek. 
Similar  intelligence  produces  similar  results  in  religion  as  in 
art.  The  Redskins  also  worship  waterfalls  and  the  Africans 
have  myths  resembling  the  German  beliefs.  Nixes  under 
another  name  live  in  Burmese  rivers.  The  fashioning  of  the 
world  from  the  body  of  an  original  giant  Ymir  reproduces 
the  Vedic  dismemberment  of  the  original  god  Man.  The 
fights  with  giants  carried  on  by  Thor  and  Freyr  are  like 
those  of  Hindu  gods  with  the  gigantic  fiends.  But  there  is 
not  in  Germany  that  thorough  dualism  which  appears  in 
Greece  in  the  opposition  between  giants  and  gods.  The  Ger- 
man giants  are  often  friendly  and  helpful  to  the  gods.  The 
dwarfs  are  Celtic  as  well  as  German ;  they  are  artisans  and 
are  more  deeply  impressed  on  the  popular  mind  than  are 
the  giants.  They  are  the  black  elves,  contrasted  with  the 
light  and  grey  elves,  and  are  often  visible  only  when  they 
lose  their  caps.  In  general,  as  contrasted  with  Slavs,  whose 
cult  is  chiefly  of  house-  farm-  and  family-spirits,  the  Ger- 
mans made  more  of  the  greater  nature-spirits,  storm,  sky, 
etc. ;  though  they,  too,  revered  the  little  spirits. 

German  gods  are  fairly  decent  creations  though  not  moral 
in  the  modern  sense.  Purity  and  fidelity  are  marked  Ger- 
man characteristics  from  the  time  of  Tacitus  to  that  of  the 
mediaeval  sagas.  The  trading  people  of  the  north  are  more 
prudent  than  courageous;  but  treachery  is  hateful  to  the 
gods.  Otherwise  no  ethical  consideration  determines  man's 
fate  hereafter.  A  man  may  be  tricky,  but  not  false  to  his 


l68  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

word.  The  more  blood  the  warrior  has  spilled  the  more 
welcome  is  he  to  Odhin's  hall.  Bravery  and  faith,  of  which 
truth  is  a  reflection,  give  the  keynote  of  religious  morality, 
and  this  perpetuates  the  simple  old  cult  of  Mars,  for  Scandi- 
navian belief,  despite  its  foreign  elements,  is  at  bottom  Teu- 
tonic. 

On  the  whole,  Teutonic  religion  combines  a  crude  cult 
with  a  crude  belief.  It  lies  between  the  intellectual  level  of 
the  North  and  South  American  Indians,  never  rising  to  the 
height  of  the  best  Mexican  and  Peruvian  religious  ideas  but 
distinctly  surpassing,  in  some  regards,  that  of  the  savages 
of  our  Northern  hemisphere.  It  shows  no  deep  religious 
feeling,  no  religious  ethical  system ;  it  has  no  religious  poet 
or  prophet;  only  tales  about  gods.  It  has  feasts,  not  fasts, 
as  a  religious  expression.  Scandinavia  has  only  a  primitive 
dualism  (good  gods  vs.  giants,  sun  vs.  darkness).  Primitive 
myth  and  savage  cult  characterize  this  religion,  which  is  de- 
void of  spirituality  and  of  intellectual  dignity,  until,  prob- 
ably under  Christian  influence,  higher  ideas  appear  in  the 
North.  As  compared  with  the  Celt,  the  Teuton  lacks  even 
the  druidic  philosophy,  as  he  lacks  the  mystic  feeling,  withal 
at  a  time  when  his  more  southern  relatives  had  already 
passed  beyond  their  own  early  view  of  divine  things  and  ^of 
the  rough  gods  found  in  the  Homeric  world.  A  thousand 
years  later  in  developing,  when  fully  developed  (before 
Christian  influence  began),  Teutonic  thought  was  still  almost 
as  rude  as  at  its  beginning.  The  only  Aryans  standing  on  a 
lower  religious  level  were  the  Slavs.  Perhaps  this  was  be- 
cause the  unaided  Aryan  intellect  could  get  no  further, 
though  the  contrast  of  the  northern  group  of  Slavs,  Teutons, 
and  Celts,  with  the  southern  Greeks,  Hindus,  and  Persians 
still  remains  as  strange  as  it  is  striking,  for  no  outside  phi- 
losophy raised  Greek  or  Hindu  thought  to  its  early  eminence. 
The  cleverer  people  may  have  gone  south  and  left  the  slower- 
witted  behind,  since  those  who  emigrate  from  a  poor  land  to 
a  better  are  usually  the  more  progressive.  Or  perhaps,  what 
is  more  flattering  to  ourselves,  climate  created  culture  by 


RELIGION  OF  THE  TEUTONS  169 

forcing  to  quicker  growth  an  innate  power.  But,  since  we 
have  no  right  to  suppose  that  language  and  race  are  inter- 
changeable terms,  they  that  became  Greeks  and  Hindus  may 
have  had  little  in  common  religiously  with  Teutons  and 
Celts,  a  few  deified  natural  phenomena,  Sky,  Wind,  Fire, 
the  greater  lights  of  heaven,  and  revered  ancestors ;  or  per- 
haps not  all  of  these. 

We  turn  now  to  those  advanced  religions  which  have  left 
literatures  based  upon  religion.  They  fall  into  two  great 
groups,  one  of  the  Far  East,  India,  China,  and  Japan,  con- 
nected through  Buddhism ;  the  other  of  the  Near  East,  com- 
prising the  religions  of  Mesopotamia  and  the  Mediterranean, 
connected  partly  through  historical  dependence  and  partly 
through  a  common  stock  of  inherited  ideas.  Connexion 
between  the  two  groups  is  doubtful  for  the  early  period. 
We  shall  begin  with  the  religion  of  India,  which  stands  in 
its  beginning  nearest  to  the  religions  of  the  Aryans  we  have 
already  examined. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  chief  classical  texts:  Caesar,  De  Bella  Gallico,  i.  50; 
iv.  7 ;  vi.  21.  Tacitus,  Germania;  Agricola,  xxviii ;  Annales, 
i.  51,  seq. ;  xiii.  55,  seq.;  Histories,  iv.  14,  22,  61,  65;  v.  22. 
Pliny,  Natural  History,  iv.  27,  seq. 

Wilhelm  Mannhardt,  Der  Baumkultus  der  Germanen  und  ihrer 
Nachbarstdmme;  Antike  Wald-  und  Feldkulte,  Berlin,, 
1875-77;  Mythologische  Forschungen,  Strassburg,  1884. 

E.  H.  Meyer,  Germanische  Mythologie,  Berlin,  1891. 

W.  Golther,  Handbuch  der  Germanise  hen  Mythologie,  Leipzig, 

1895- 

F.  B.  Gummere,  Germanic  Origines,  New  York,  1892. 

P.  D.  Chantepie  de-la  Saussaye,  The  Religion  of  the  Teutons, 
Boston,  1902.  (Contains  an  excellent  bibliography.) 

S.  Bugge  (translated  by  O.  Brenner),  Studien  iiber  die 
Entstehung  der  nordischen  Goiter-  und  Heldensagen,  Mu- 
nich, 1889. 

The  following  standard  works  are  of  more  general  content: 
Jacob  Grimm,  Deutsche  Mythologie,  Berlin,  4th  ed.,  1875- 
78;  K.  Miillenhoff,  Deutsche  Alter tumskunde,  Berlin,  1870- 
92;  Germania  Antiqua,  Berlin,  1873,  a  collection  of  texts. 


CHAPTER  ELEVEN 

THE  RELIGIONS   OF   INDIA 
I.   FROM   THE  VEDAS   TO   BUDDHA 

WHEN  the  Aryans  invaded  India  they  found  in  the  Punjab 
certain  snub-nosed  black-skinned  natives  whom  they  reduced 
to  submission.  These  were  probably  Dravidians.  A  few 
centuries  later,  along  the  Ganges  and  in  the  hill-country 
south  of  it,  they  came  in  touch  with  other  wild  tribes,  gen- 
erally called  Kolarian.  The  religion  of  all  these  savages 
was  animistic,  in  part  totemic,  but  also  a  form  of  nature- 
worship.  The  southern  Dravidians  today  retain  under  a 
later  mask,  easily  removed,  much  of  their  old  belief.  They 
are  agriculturists  and  each  village  has  its  own  Great  Mother 
spirit,  sometimes  without  any  other  name,  sometimes  with 
several  names,  who  is  represented  by  rough  stones  in  a 
shrine  or  a  tent  (tabernacle)  used  temporarily,  when  the 
goddess  is  needed,  as  when  plague  breaks  out.  Often  a 
post  or  a  mere  pot  of  water  is  the  goddess.  The  people 
offer  her  flowers  and  on  occasion,  because  she  is  angry,  an 
animal  sacrifice,  in  which  the  animal's  blood  is  used  for  fer- 
tility and  medicine.  The  Mother  guards  her  village ;  a 
boundary-stone  keeps  out  evil  spirits.  A  female  ancestress 
is  the  great  divinity  of  some  tribes  and  sends  them  all  their 
woes.  The  hill-Dravidians  (Khonds)  kill  a  pig,  whose  blood 
falls  into  a  pit,  and  suffocate  a  human  victim  in  the  pit,  bury- 
ing his  flesh  at  boundary-lines,  the  victim  being  a  youth  pre- 
viously carefully  tended,  like  an  Ainu  bear.  The  Kolarians 
worship  stones  at  the  foot  of  a  tree,  the  snake  and  tree,  ani- 
mals, animal^totems,  earth,  the  sun,  etc. ;  recognize  spirits 
swarming  everywhere,  have  sacred  groves,  dances,  and  songs, 

170 


THE  VEDIC  RELIGION  OF  INDIA  I/I 

and  many  believe  in  metempsychosis.  Sun,  earth,  rain, 
seasons,  are  all  divinities ;  smaller  phenomena  are  regarded 
as  possessed  by  spirits  and  ghosts.  Eschatology  is  on  a  par 
with  that  of  our  Indians.  Some  native  tribes,  however,  had 
developed  considerable  skill  in  building  and  represent  a  com- 
paratively high  civilization,  from  which  the  Aryans  bor- 
rowed. 

The  original  inhabitants  thus  offered  to  the  Aryans  a  field 
like  that  offered  to  the  Greeks  by  the  "  Pelasgians,"  marked 
by  a  religion  of  ghosts,  ghouls,  spirits,  and  animals,  with 
some  nature-cult  and  temple-service,  but  sharply  contrasted 
with  the  warrior-religion  which  overcame  it  and  yet  was 
deeply  influenced  by  it.  This  Aryan  warrior-religion  looked 
rather  above  than  under  the  earth  and  cared  more  for  gods 
than  for  ghosts.  Such  is  the  religion  common  to  the  in- 
vaders of  Greece  and  India  and  the  early  Teutons.  The 
chief  Indie  Aryan  gods  are  mentioned  about  1400  as  the 
gods  of  a  people  who  had  not  yet  got  beyond  Cappadocia, 
probably  on  their  way  to  India,1  as  Varuna,  Mitra,  Indra, 
and  (the  healing  twin  gods)  Nasatya. 

The  invading  Aryans  were  not  agriculturists  but  warriors, 
whose  wealth  and  occupation  were  cattle  and  lifting  cattle. 
There  were  no  castes,  but  there  were  priests  who  served 
the  Three-and-Thirty  gods  (Zoroaster's  "  thirty  three 
lords"),  with  oblations  of  beer,  soma,  Zoroaster's  haoma, 
on  a  spread  of  straw,  used  in  both  rituals,  at  the  hands  of 
"  oblationists,"  so  named  in  both  cults,  and  praised  them 
in  verse  measured  like  the  Gathas  of  Zoroaster.  In  fact, 
the  two  religions  were  simply  different  phases  of  one.  The 

1  Scholars  are  divided  as  to  when  the  Aryans  first  entered  India 
(by  the  way  of  Persia;  there  may  have  been  a  prior  invasion  from 
the  northwest).  Some  ascribe  an  absurd  antiquity  to  the  Vedas, 
the  first  literature.  Conservative  writers  have  always  held  that  1200 
B.  c.  is  as  early  as  we  have  any  grounds  for  dating  the  Rig  Veda, 
and,  in  fact,  1000  B.  c.  is  early  enough  to  account  for  it,  a  date  which 
brings  it  into  a  needed  proximity  to  the  Zoroastrian  Gathas,  which 
in  language  and  ideas  represent  an  intimate  and  close  temporal  con- 
nection with  the  Vedas. 


I72  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Veda  recognizes  the  Wise  Spirit  (Asura)  of  heaven,  wor- 
shipped by  Zoroaster,  but  not  so  universally.  It  was  an 
aristocratic  cult,1  as  Zoroaster's  religion,  too,  was  aristo- 
cratic. But  many  clans  scarcely  consider  this  Wise  Spirit. 
They  prefer  the  worship  of  the  god  of  storm,  war,  and 
fertility,  Indra,  to  whose  service  the  Rig  Veda  is  chiefly  de- 
voted; while  Zoroaster  recognizes  such  nature-spirits,  but 
only  as  inferior  to  the  Spirit  of  Wisdom.  At  the  same  time 
in  the  Rig  Veda  appears  a  subsidiary  cult  of  Sun,  Father 
Sky,  Wind,  Mother  Earth,  Fire,  Wind,  etc.,  perhaps  of  stars, 
and  the  very  important  cult  of  Manes  and  of  Yama,  lord 
of  the  dead,  now  blessed,  living  with  Yama,  Zoroastrian 
Yima,  in  a  heavenly  paradise.  As  in  Germany,  the  cult  of 
Dyaus  (Tiu,  Zeus)  is  observable  but  it  is  already  decadent. 
The  same  gods,  in  other  words,  are  here  the  object  of  a 
cult  as  were  found  in  Teutonic  and  Slavic  religions  and  for 
the  most  part  with  identical  names,  even  to  the  smaller 
members  of  the  pantheon,  House-lord,  etc.2 . 

In  its  cult  of  Sky,  Wind,  Sun,  Dawn,  and  other  trans- 
parent gods  (a  convenient  term  invented  by  Usener),  its 
noisy  beer-ritual,  and  its  simple  morality  of  truth  and  brav- 
ery, the  Vedic  religion  is  still  quite  crude,  though  it  has  a 
complicated  ritual,  which,  with  the  skilled  versifiers  and 
astute  priesthood,  shows  that  it  is  no  longer  primitive  in  the 
sense  of  being  naive.  Some  of  its  priests  were  mercenary, 
some  were  poets  and  philosophers.  Before  the  end  of  the 
first  Vedic  period,  the  priests  had  already  clouded  the  faces 
of  the  nature-gods,  recognized  a  unity  underlying  spiritual 
plurality,  speculated  as  to  the  origin  of  being,  established  an 

1  Varuna,  the  wise  spirit  of  the  Rig  Veda,  is  recognized  as  belong- 
ing to  the  warrior  class,  of  which  he  is  king.    As  a  western  god 
he  is  connected  with  the  night-sky  or  as  the  night-sky  with  the  west. 

2  Thus  Vayu,  Dyaus,  and  Agni,  wind,  sky,  and  fire.    The  twin- 
gods   are  in  nature  one  with   Castor  and   Pollux,   as   sun,   Surya, 
is  Greek  Helios  (serius).    Indra  may  be  the  Anglo-Saxon  ent,  giant. 
Slavic    Andra    (audra).     With    the    Wise    Spirit    (Asura)    called 
Varuna   is  associated   Mitra    (Mithra),   "twin   lords   of   right  and 
light."    Varuna  especially  "  hates  the  lie,"  and  punishes  wrong,  but 
forgives  the  penitent,  as  does  the  Wise  Spirit  of  Zoroaster. 


THE  VEDIC  RELIGION  OF  INDIA  173 

elaborate  religious  mysticism,  and  swept  the  devil-cult  and 
witchcraft  practices  aside  as  a  kind  of  magic  fit  to  be  re- 
corded only  in  a  heap  of  mangled  verses  drawn  mainly  from 
the  Rig  Veda  and  devoted  to  demonology.  Eventually  this 
heap  was  elaborated  into  an  independent  Atharva  or  Fire 
Veda,  though  fire  in  magic  had  been  largely  displaced  by 
charms  and  antidotes.  It  lingered  on  in  popular  literature, 
however,  while  in  the  priestly  ritual  it  was  made  a  minister 
of  the  Soma-cult.  That  the  lower  cult  of  demons  grew 
pari  passu  with  the  submergence  of  the  Aryans  in  the  flood 
of  animistic  natives,  and  that  the  Atharva  Veda  is  at  least 
several  centuries  later  than  the  Rig  Veda,  are  facts  often 
overlooked  by  those  who  assume  that  the  lower  cult  was  as 
important  to  the  Aryans  as  was  the  higher.  It  is  significant 
also  that  the  priests  ministering  to  the  Atharva  cult  were 
always  of  inferior  sort  and  generally  despised. 

The  trend  of  thought  in  the  Vedic  age  was  rather  toward 
consolidating  gods  than  toward  exalting  any  one  of  them. 
For  this  reason  the  cult  of  Varuna  declined  and  the  popular 
Indra  became  not  exactly  an  all-god  but  an  any-god,  who 
was  conceived  as  greater  than  heaven  and  earth  and  as  em- 
bracing the  functions  of  other  gods.  A  vagueness  of  this 
sort  led  to  the  dimming  of  faith.  Synthesis  began.  Mock- 
ery followed.  The  orthodox  were  described  as  "  involved 
in  fog  and  talk  " ;  the  three  fires  of  sacrifice  were  declared 
to  be  the  same,  "  these  three  are  one."  The  Goddess  Un- 
limited (mother  of  the  gods)  was  first  postulated  and  then 
declared  to  be  "  all  things."  And  again :  "  Being  is  one ; 
it  has  the  names  of  different  gods."  Thus,  rather  than  by 
expelling  other  gods,  as  in  Palestine,  or  by  subjecting  other 
gods  to  one,  as  in  Babylon,  India  reached  the  idea  of  "  the 
one  spirituality  " ;  though  antithetic  to  this  trend  there  was 
also  a  new  development  in  the  creation  of  a  Lord  of  Beings 
or  Father-god,  who  emerges  at  the  end  of  the  first  Vedic 
period.  He  is  Creator  of  gods  and  men,  but  remains  always 
rather  a  figure  than  an  active  personality  and  is  eventually 
calle£  the  Power  (Brahman). 


174  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

After  perhaps  a  couple  of  centuries  the  Aryans  drifted 
down  to  the  Ganges  valley,  where  they  appear  as  agricul- 
turists and  townsfolk,  farmers  and  merchants,  with  a  large 
dependent  population  of  native  blacks.  And  as  the  brave 
Aryans  of  the  Punjab  had  gods  in  their  own  image,  so  now, 
when  castes  had  formed  and  priests  were  the  power  behind 
the  throne,  these  priests  made  the  gods  over  into  their  own 
image.  From  now  on  the  mass  of  gods  appear  only  as  evil- 
minded,  cowardly,  bargaining  creatures,  who  disputed  about 
their  honoraria  (sacrifices),  and  themselves  made  sacrifices, 
just  like  priests.  Town  life,  with  a  body  of  slaves  largely 
drawn  from  wild  tribes,  brought  up  new  gods  from  the 
dregs  of  un-Aryan  society.  So  rose  the  fearful  form  of 
the  new  storm-  and  fertility-god,  disease-sending,  lightning- 
using,  Shiva.  In  the  meantime  the  priests  exalted  the  cult 
of  the  sun  as  Vishnu,  with  whom  later  were  identified 
Krishna  in  the  West  and  Rama  in  the  East.  Vishnu, 
the  wide-striding  Vedic  god,  who  "  makes  day "  and  is 
"  swift  in  going "  is  formally  recognized  as  the  creative 
sun  and  "  highest  of  gods."  The  farmers,  though  holding 
tenaciously  to  their  "  Aryan  rights,"  to  drink  soma  and 
learn  the  sacred  lore,  soon  became  practically  as  inferior  to 
the  aristocrats  of  the  court,  nobles  and  priests,  as  farmers 
and  traders  always  become  when  brought  up  against  those 
who  have  specialized  in  ruling  by  force  and  trickery.  The 
aristocrats  of  this  time  said  openly  that  the  middle  classes 
were  nothing  more  than  "  food  for  warriors,"  and  the  priests, 
who  served  only  the  nobles,  their  best  pay-masters,  and 
professed  to  be  "  earthly  gods,"  gave  up  almost  entirely  the 
old  religion.  They  simply  ran  a  complicated  machine  of 
sacrifice,  costly  and  cumbersome,  wholly  magical  in  purpose, 
as  spellbinders  of  mystic  spells.  What  they  revered  was  the 
mystic  Power  of  the  spell,  which  they  made  a  divine,  even  a 
supreme  Power  called  Brahma. 

Incidentally  the  secondary  ritualistic  texts  of  this  period 
(c.  800  B.  c.)  tell  us  of  the  first  Man  (Manu),  possessor  of 
a  minotaur  whose  bellow  destroyed  demons;  of  the  Deluge 


THE  VEDIC  RELIGION  OF  INDIA  175 

(perhaps  of  Babylonian  origin),  from  which  Manu  alone 
was  saved  in  a  ship  by  means  of  a  Fish  (as  the  fish-god  Ea 
saved  his  worshipper)  ;  of  the  tower  on  which  demons  tried 
to  scale  the  sky;  and  recount  other  native  or  foreign  ideas 
now  domesticated.  In  the  service,  the  chief  distinction  is 
that  offerings  are  laid  in  a  pit  for  the  Manes  and  in  fire 
for  the  gods.  Human  sacrifice  has  never  failed  in  India; 
but  it  was  now  formally  ignored  in  favour  of  horses,  bulls, 
buffaloes,  goats,  and  rams.  Harvest  festivals  and  daily  do- 
mestic sacrifices  were  regularly  made  to  the  gods,  Manes, 
and  spirits.  At  the  winter  solstice  there  was  a  rite  to  expel 
demons,  bring  rain,  and  produce  fruitfulness.  Seasonal  sac- 
rifices took  place  every  four  months.  Sympathetic  magic, 
rites  of  expiation,  an  all-souls  feast,  a  rite  through  which 
girls  got  husbands  by  propitiating  Shiva,  expulsion  of  de- 
mons by  satisfying  them  with  blood  poured  on  the  ground, 
by  noise,  smells,  and  fire,  fasting  and  chastity  as  necessary  to 
religious  rites,  sacrifice,  as  a  communion,  a  bargain,  as  piacu- 
lar  and  as  apotropaic;  a  gradual  change  from  an  under- 
ground pit  as  the  ghost-home  to  the  place  of  torment  for  sin- 
ners, a  resurrection,  but  of  shining  bodies,  and  a  sensuous 
paradise  for  the  good  in  Yama's,  later  in  Indra's,  heaven, — 
these  are  the  prominent  features  of  the  decadent  Vedic  age, 
in  which  an  abstract  Creator,  as  "  Lord  of  beings,"  towered 
above  the  gods  of  old. 

Of  survivals  from  earlier  stages  it  is  difficult  to  speak 
with  certainty,  since  we  are  not  sure  what  survives  and 
what  has  been  taken  from  neighbouring  Dravidians  and 
Kolarians.  Thus  the  Khasas  are  regarded  as  a  warrior- 
clan  and  profess  to  be  Rajputs,  but  they  are  only  half  Hindu 
and  still  practise  the  custom  of  having  one  wife  for  sev- 
eral brothers.  Totemism  may  have  come  from  the  Oraons 
(mouse- totem)  and  Garos ;  but  Aryan  totemism,  if  it  existed, 
has  left  no  sure  trace,  only  animal-worship,  withal  the  wor- 
ship of  an  animal  as  representing  a  god  temporarily.  Really 
divine  animals  like  the  cow  are  more  divine  (to  the  Brah- 
mans)  later  than  earlier.  Many  families  are  called  by  ani- 


176  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

mal  names.  Gods  too  are  represented  by  animals,  Indra 
and  Shiva,  generative  gods,  by  bull  and  boar;  the  sun  by 
a  horse,  a  goat,  etc.,  incarnations  of  divinity.  The  horse- 
sacrifice  celebrates  the  sun  as  a  horse  and  might  be  a  re- 
flection of  the  same  spirit  as  that  shown  to  the  Ainu  bear, 
for  the  horse  is  told  that  it  is  being  sent  to  heaven.  But 
a  divine  animal  is  never  sacrificed  to  itself  in  Vedic  reli- 
gion. There  is  here  no  slaying  of  a  god,  at  least  to  Hindu 
thought.  Yet  the  sacramental  meal  is  found,  especially  in 
connection  with  the  Manes,  with  whom  the  worshipper  com- 
municates in  the  eating  of  the  gods'  food.  The  prevalent 
belief  in  the  efficacy  of  foundation-sacrifices  is  established 
by  the  Vedic  building^ritual.  Of  the  earth  as  a  vegetation- 
deity  demanding  human  sacrifice,  there  is  no  trace  before 
Shivaite  worship,  which  includes  that  of  the  Mother  god- 
dess, a  horrible  monster  of  the  wild-tribes.  She  is  the 
female  power  and  human  victims  were  offered  to  her  (as 
goats  are  now).1 

But  ritual  and  magic  made  only  one  side  of  the  later  re- 
ligion. There  were  still  philosophic  priests,  able  successors 
of  those  Vedic  seers,  who  had  asked  "  to  what  god  shall  we 
sacrifice  ?  "  (only  to  the  great  Creator,  they  meant)  ;  who  had 
argued  that  "  desire  is  the  seed  of  mind  " ;  who  had  made 
the  "  Soul  of  the  world  "  their  quest  and  said  "  in  man  and 
sun  is  but  The  One."  One  such  later  priest,  vexed  with  sac- 
rificial hocus-pocus,  cries  "  How  can  people  believe  such 
stuff?  "  Others  left  the  sacrifice  for  the  study  (the  forest) 
and  from  them  come  what  we  call  the  Upanishads  or  later 
treatises  of  secret  wisdom,  disjointed,  tentative,  illogical 
studies,  crude,  and  still  clinging  to  the  old  mythological  re- 
ligion, but  containing  earnest  and  deep  inquiries  into  the 
great  problem  of  the  age,  the  nature  of  God  and  man's 

1  See  on  these  points  a  paper  of  Professor  A.  B.  Keith  in  the 
Journ.  Royal  Asiat.  Society,  Oct.,  1907.  Professor  Ridgeway's  sug- 
gestion that  the  Shiva  was  once  a  man  may  be  ignored,  as  may 
Herbert  Spencer's  older  contention  that  Ushas,  Dawn,  was  once  a 
lady  whose  carriage  was  smashed  by  a  rude  Mr.  Indra. 


THE  VEDIC  RELIGION  OF  INDIA  I?7 

relation  to  the  divine  Power  or  Self  (Soul)  of  the  world. 
Here  begins  the  first  enunciation  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
everlasting  effect  of  the  Act.  Whatever  we  do  or  think 
(thought  also  as  action)  makes  its  mark  on  our  soul  and 
according  to  the  state  of  the  soul  thus  marked  will  be  our 
fate  hereafter.  The  faint  beginning  of  this  doctrine  called 
Karma  (act)  is  Rig  Vedic,  where  one  is  told  to  "  join  his 
good  works  "  in  heaven  and  in  the  sub- Vedic  idea  that  one 
by  good  works,  merit  stored  up,  can  get  "  beyond  the 
sun "  and  so  escape  recurrent  death.  For  the  complete 
doctrine  also  aims  at  suppressing  the  recurrent  "  death  and 
birth  wheel "  and  placing  the  perfect  man  beyond  fear  of 
metempsychosis.  This  doctrine  assumes  universal  applica- 
tion, for  Karma  affects  all,  from  the  Creator  to  a  blade  of 
grass.  In  popular  presentation,  since  it  soon  lost  its  esoteric 
form,  it  teaches  that  a  thief  becomes  in  the  next  life  a 
thieving  animal,  etc. ;  but  it  had  to  cross  the  older  view  of 
hell  and  in  fact  soon  united  with  it.  A  taste  of  hell-torment, 
followed  by  a  new  birth  according  to  his  former  deeds,  was 
every  man's  prospect ;  or  first  a  taste  of  heaven,  and  then, 
when  the  stored  merit  was  exhausted,  like  a  spent  balloon 
a  man  dropped  to  earth  and  was  re-born  according  to  what 
his  previous  life  had  been,  the  good,  their  evil  purged  away, 
in  a  high  caste,  the  very  good  as  a  god.  Such  a  man  be- 
comes a  "  god  by  merit "  as  distinguished  from  a  "  god  by 
nature."  But  the  wise  man  who  discards  sacrifice  and 
rites  goes  direct  to  the  Brahma  and  returns  no  more.  Only 
he  who  "  knows  Brahma "  can  do  this.  But  herein  the 
whole  religious  paraphernalia  of  the  past  is  really  flung 
overboard.  Only  the  figment  that  rites  were  a  sort  of 
preparation  for  higher  knowledge  saved  religion,  in  the  old 
sense,  at  all  for  the  mystics  and  philosophers.  Belonging 
to  the  priestly  caste,  they  were  reluctant  to  dismiss  as  en- 
tirely useless  the  ancient  ritual.  Knowing  it  was  useless  in 
itself,  they  made  it  preparatory,  symbolized  it,  turned  it  into 
a  power-mystery  for  themselves  and  continued  to  teach  it  to 
the  unintelligent  as  still  valid.  There  was  no  hypocrisy  in 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

this,  for  to  the  ordinary  man  incapable  of  philosophy  the 
rite  was  all  that  bound  him  to  religion. 

Ethically  the  late  Vedic  religion  is  supported  by  divine 
precedent.  The  gods  love  truth;  purity  is  the  first  step  to 
divinity ;  no  sinner  can  know  Him  who  is  sinless.  "  The 
Soul  of  the  World  is  pure,  like  a  light  within  the  heart.  To 
attain  to  it  one  must  be  truthful,  practice  devotion  (ascetic 
fasting,  etc.),  gain  knowledge,  be  abstinent."  The  Abso- 
lute (Power)  in  the  Upanishads  interchanges  with  the  per- 
sonal Self  (Soul)  of  the  World.  This  absolute  soul  is  all, 
spirit  and  matter ;  it  is  pure  being,  good,  intelligent,  blissful, 
and  if  one  really  knows  that  one's  self  is  one  with  that  Self, 
one  becomes  in  fact  that  World-Self,  one  merges  into  it,  loses 
individual  consciousness,  becomes  a  part  of  the  whole,  un- 
conscious of  difference.1  Indefinable  is  the  Soul  of  the 
World,  to  be  defined  only  as  "not  this,  not  that"  (so  the 
mystic  of  the  Middle  Ages  says  "  God  is  Nothing  ").  There 
is  here  no  doctrine  of  illusion;  the  world  is  real.  Yet  the 
weight  laid  on  spirituality  leads  to  the  antithesis  between 
purest  soul  and  not  purest,  partly  because  the  first  is  not 
transitory,  as  all  material  things  appear  to  be,  and  again  hu- 
man life  in  its  round  of  birth  and  death  contrasts  with  the 
state  of  "  not  death  " ;  for  pure  soul,  the  unincorporate  alone 
is  really  blissful. 

In  this  last  deduction  the  Upanishadist  comes  to  the  point 
where  he  touches  Buddhism  with  its  slogan,  "  birth  is  sor- 
row." Insight  and  mystic  communion  with  the  All-Soul 
enable  the  philosopher  to  become  "  awakened,"  the  very  word 
describing  Buddha.  Ascetic  saints  of  this  sort  devoted 
themselves  to  divine  knowledge  as  a  secret  sacred  posses- 
sion. But  they  began  also  to  distinguish  between  soul  and 
spirit,  as  that  which  is  of  and  in  the  world,  respectively, 
thus  leading  in  the  latter  case  to  dualism.  The  secondary 

1  At  this  stage  begins  the  rapt  mysticism  of  the  later  Vedic  age, 
afterwards  methodically  cultivated  and  systematized  as  Yoga-dis- 
cipline, by  which  the  soul  acquired  aloofness  from  matter  and  be- 
comes master  of  secret  powers.  In  the  Vedanta  All-soul  belief  a 
similar  process  leads  to  absorption  in  the  All-Soul. 


THE  VEDIC  RELIGION  OF  INDIA  1 79 

Upanishads  reveal,  moreover,  the  inevitable  tendency  to 
make  concrete  the  image  of  the  Soul,  as  Lord,  hence  as  a 
personal  God,  and  hence  again  as  a  God  upon  whose  will 
and  grace  depends  the  worshipper's  weal,  nay  his  very  abil- 
ity to  know  that  God,  knowledge  of  whom  is  salvation. 
The  next  step  is  to  know  His  name  (sectarianism).  On 
the  other  hand,  following  the  tendency  to  divide  the  universe 
into  matter  and  spirit,  some  maintained  that  there  were 
individual  spirits  without  number,  but  these  were  meshed 
in  matter,  till  release  from  all  material  bondage  made  them 
free.  This  tendency  dissipated  the  idea  of  an  All-Soul 
and  resulted  in  pure  dualism  (Sankhya  philosophy),  but  it, 
too,  succumbed  to  the  inevitable  and  made  into  highest  spirit 
one  of  the  freed  spirits  as  Supreme  Spirit,  though  not  as 
Creator  God.  Mystic  exercises  (Yoga  discipline),  reduced 
to  a  science,  mark  this  religious  phase,  which  has  a  further 
well-defined  tendency  to  regard  physical  attitudes  as  phases 
of  religious  growth. 

In  the  meantime  the  masses  continued  to  worship  all  the 
religious  phenomena  of  their  inherited  faith,  physical  ob- 
jects, ghosts,  and  gods  above,  with  a  sectarian  growth 
leading  to  the  Shiva  and  Vishnu  cults.  The  hypostasis  of 
Brahma  was  retained  as  Brahman  the  Creator.  The  masses 
kept,  too,  the  hope  of  a  happy  hereafter  in  a  joyous  material 
heaven.  Song,  dance,  and  mimetic  exhibitions,  not  too  nice, 
accompanied  religious  festivals.  In  short,  as  is  sometimes 
forgotten,  the  common  people  remained  frankly  Vedic  in 
their  beliefs,  fears,  and  hopes,  undisturbed  by  the  disquisi- 
tions of  the  mystics.  Most  of  the  population  were  now  not 
Aryan  at  all;  but  all  who  could,  called  themselves  so  and 
invented  pedigrees  which  Aryanized  them.  At  the  same 
time  they  clung  to  their  old  native  gods ;  so  these  gods  were 
brahmanized  too  and  called  "  forms  "  of  this  or  that  great 
recognized  god,  a  process  still  going  on  in  India,  where 
every  wild-tribe  devil  is  converted  by  the  Brahman  priests 
and  becomes  a  form  of  Shiva  or  of  Vishnu.  On  this  un- 
ending undercurrent  of  the  popular  religion,  with  its  cult 


l8o  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

of  spirits,  ghosts,  and  godlings,  its  spring-festivals,  its 
maintenance  of  the  old  domestic  rites,  its  attention  to  the 
dark,  the  productive,  the  mysterious,  we  cannot  linger,  but 
must  turn  to  the  great  heresies  of  the  sixth  century,  B.  c. 

JAINISM 

At  this  period  religious  interest  was  rather  an  affectation 
of  the  petty  Rajas  who  ruled  along  the  Ganges  from  Delhi 
to  Benares.  Like  Akbar,  they  liked  to  encourage  religious 
and  philosophical  debates  and  pretend  to  take  a  part  in  them 
and  even  to  decide  them.  In  the  tumult  of  warring  sects 
of  this  time,  two  (there  were  many  others)  came  to  lasting 
prominence,  Jainism  and  Buddhism.  The  former  was  the 
older.  The  name  comes  from  Jina,  conqueror,  a  title  be- 
stowed upon  triumphant  leaders  of  sects,  who  had  con- 
quered all  controversial  opponents  and  also  conquered  for 
themselves  whatever  bliss  true  religion  may  win.  In  this 
case  the  conquering  Jina  was  Vardhamana  or  Mahavira  (d. 
484  B.C.),  pupil  of  a  certain  Parshvanatha.  This  Maha- 
vira either  magnified  his  teacher's  order  or  instituted  one  of 
his  own,  whose  members  called  themselves  Nirgranthas 
(Emancipated).  They  did  not  believe  in  the  authority  of 
the  Vedas  nor  in  the  existence  of  God,  but  adopted  a  dual- 
istic  philosophy.  Certain  illuminated  human  beings  of  the 
past  became  their  objects  of  adoration.  These  were  called 
Tirthankaras,  whose  images  today  adorn  the  Jain  temples. 
They  taught  also  that  animals  should  not  be  injured  and  are 
still  famous  for  the  care  they  take  not  to  injure  life.  Sal- 
vation, they  believe,  depends  on  faith  in  their  founder  as 
a  saviour,  through  his  teaching  how  men  may  become 
emancipated,  on  a  right  understanding  of  his  doctrines,  and 
on  right  living.  The  soul  must  cease  from  restless  activ- 
ity ;  a  man  may  even  starve  to  death  with  this  end  in  view. 
If  thus  calmed  in  life,  it  afterwards  enters  an  existence  of 
peace,  bodiless  and  immortal.  This  sect,  despite  its  heresy, 
has  not  antagonized  the  Brahmans,  as  it  clung  to  rites  and 
ceremonies.  It  has  existed  for  2,400  years,  being  espe- 


JAINISM  l8l 

cially  prominent  in  West  and  South  India.  It  practically 
worships  the  great  Jina  and  his  predecessors,  for,  like  the 
Buddhists,  the  Jains  believe  there  were  many  Jinas.  It 
was  always  a  formal  sect  and  one  of  Mahavira's  disciples 
called  Gosala  founded  a  dissenting  sub-sect  which  after- 
wards (circa  300  B.C.)  were  called  the  Digambaras  or 
naked  ascetics  as  opposed  to  the  Shvetambaras  or  slightly 
clothed.  Originally,  however,  Gosala,  representing  the 
Ajivika-sect,  was  a  "  livelihood  "  man  or  professional  beg- 
gar, whose  life  was  morally  objectionable ;  but  he  defended 
it  on  the  score  of  determinism,  disclaiming  freedom  of  will 
and  moral  responsibility,  views  offensive  to  Mahavira,  al- 
though he  also  was  a  naked  ascetic.  The  Jain  church  in 
general  allowed  its  lay  brothers  to  build  nunneries  and 
monasteries,  whose  members  constituted  the  bulk  of  the 
faithful.  Owing  to  the  great  number  of  Jains  and  their 
influence  upon  art  and  science,  the  religion  is  one  that  cannot 
be  ignored,  though  it  has  added  little  to  original  thought 
or  religious  expression.  The  Jains  of  today  are  a  pleasing 
sect,  who  make  an  excellent  impression  owing  to  the  ab- 
sence of  idols  and  of  grosser  superstitions  in  their  religion 
and  to  their  placid  and  gentle  demeanour.1  Mahavira  and 
Gosala  were  the  most  prominent  leaders  of  the  eight  sects 
of  the  period  which  Buddha  regarded  as  teaching  wrong 
doctrines,  four  of  them  being  antinomian  (incontinent)  and 
four  being  "  unsatisfying." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

W.  Crooke,  The  Popular  Religion  and  Folk-lore  of  Northern 

India,  London,  1896. 
Arthur  Macdonell,   Vcdic  Mythology,  in  Grundriss  der  Indo- 

arischen  Philologie. 

1  Not  so  pleasing  to  western  taste  is  the  Jains'  obj  ection  to  the 
destruction  of  vermin.  At  the  present  day  the  need  of  reform  has 
been  felt  by  the  Jains  and  various  societies  have  been  organized  to 
put  fresh  spirit  into  the  sect,  which,  as  is  admitted  by  themselves, 
has  become  too  strictly  ethical  and  lost  whatever  religious  enthus- 
iasm it  ever  had. 


182  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Adolf  Kaegi,  Der  Rig  Veda,  Leipzig,  1881 ;  translated  by  R. 
Arrowsmith,  Boston,  1886. 

J.  Muir,  Original  Sanskrit  Texts,  London,  1868-1894. 

Vedic  Hymns,  translated  in  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  xlii  and 
xlvi;  Shatapatha  Brahmana,  ibid.,  xii,  xxvi,  xli,  xliii,  xliv; 
Upanishads,  ibid.,  i,  xv. 

Whitney  and  Lanman,  Atharva  Veda,  translated,  Cambridge, 
Mass.,  1905. 

A.  Barth,  The  Religion  of  India,  translated  by  J.  Wood,  Boston, 
1882. 

H.  Oldenberg,  Die  Religion  des  Veda,  Berlin,  1894;  Die  Lehre 
der  Upanishaden  und  die  An f tinge  des  Buddhismus,  Got- 
tingen,  1915.  See  also  under  Buddhism. 

M.  Bloomfield,  The  Religion  of  the  Veda,  New  York,  1908. 

E.  W.  Hopkins,  The  Religions  of  India,  Boston,  1895. 

Paul  Deussen,  Scchzig  Upanishads  des  Veda,  translated,  Leip- 
zig, 1897;  The  Philosophy  of  the  Upanishads,  Edinburgh, 
1906;  Outline  of  Indian  Philosophy,  Berlin,  1907. 

Paul  Oltramare,  Uhistoire  des  idees  theosophiques  dans  I'lnde, 
Paris,  1907. 

L.  von  Schroeder,  Indiens  Literatur  und  Cultur,  Leipzig,  1887. 

Mrs.  Sinclair  Stevenson,  The  Heart  of  Jainism,  London,  1915. 

Jain  Suttas,  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  xxii,  xlv. 

E.  Hoernle,  Ajivikas  (sect  of  Gosala),  in  Encyclopedia  of  Re- 
ligions and  Ethics. 

L.  D.  Barnett,  Antiquities  of  India,  London,  1914. 

J.  B.  Pratt,  India  and  its  Faiths,  Boston,  1915. 


CHAPTER  TWELVE 

THE   RELIGIONS   OF   INDIA.      II.    BUDDHISM 

BUDDHA,  the  Awakened,  is  the  title  given  to  Guatama  (Go- 
tama),  a  reputed  prince  of  a  Shakya  clan  living  north  of 
Benares  in  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  (d.  482  B.C.).  It 
is  not  certain  that  he  was  an  Aryan;  his  conventional  head- 
dress of  curly  locks  and  his  clan-name  have  been  thought 
to  show  descent  from  a  northern,  perhaps  Scythian  race. 
His  history  is  made  up  from  later  accounts  and  is  pre- 
sumably largely  legendary.  At  the  age  of  twenty-nine  (says 
tradition)  he  became  a  practical  pessimist,  disgusted  with 
the  rotation  of  life  and  death  (the  Karma  doctrine  is  tra- 
ditionally assumed),  and,  to  seek  an  escape,  studied  with 
various  philosophers  whose  wisdom  turned  out  useless.  At 
last,  after  seven  years,  sitting  under  the  Tree  of  Enlight- 
enment, he  became  by  intuition  the  Enlightened,  or  Awak- 
ened. He  gained  a  few  disciples  and  thereafter  preached 
his  doctrine  through  the  little  world  known  to  him,  founding 
an  order  of  mendicants  as  the  nucleus  of  a  church  to  which 
lay  members  were  admitted.  He  also,  rather  reluctantly, 
permitted  women  to  join  his  order,  as  nuns  under  supervi- 
sion of  the  elders  of  the  church.  Tradition  tells  of  a  rapid 
growth  of  the  order,  far  too  rapid  to  believe.  Buddha  died 
at  the  age  of  eighty.  Until  the  emperor  Ashoka  became 
a  Buddhist  the  sect  was  probably  only  one  of  a  number  of 
similar  religious  growths.  We  really  know  little  about  it 
till  Ashoka's  time,  the  middle  of  the  third  century  B.  c. 

Buddha  is  represented  as  conversant  with  other  philo- 
sophical systems  and  he  may  have  known  1  the  older  Upani- 

1  Oldenberg,   Die   Lehre   der   Upanishaden  und  die  Anf'dnge  des 
Buddhismus,  Gottingen,   1915,  believes  that  the  Upanishads  were  a 

183 


1 84  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

shads,  though  he  ignored  their  basic  idea  of  a  world-soul; 
the  individual  soul  he  rejected.  The  Upanishads  rather  ex- 
ulted in  the  bliss  of  being  perfect  than  sighed  over  life  as  it 
is;  they  were  joyous  rather  than  sad;  their  pessimism  was 
only  implicit.  But  Buddhism  from  the  beginning  was 
grounded  on  grief.  Buddha's  first  awakening  came  when,  as 
a  boy,  he  beheld  human  wretchedness  ;  the  wail  over  the  slav- 
ery of  birth  and  death  was  the  prelude  to  the  final  note  of 
hope. 

Of  course,  where  hope  exists  pessimism  may  be  converted 
into  optimism.  With  the  expectation  of  eventual  salvation 
no  religion  is  thoroughly  hopeless.  But,  in  respect  of  life, 
no  religion  is  so  frankly  pessimistic  as  primitive  Buddhism, 
for  in  its  scheme  life  includes  existence  in  heaven  as  well 
as  on  earth,  and  both  forms  of  life  are  to  be  got  rid  of  as 
soon  as  possible.  The  peace  of  Nirvana  comes  from  elud- 
ing love  and  life. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that,  in  contrast  to  Christianity, 
Buddhism  is  not  a  religion  of  faith  but  of  reason.  But 
Buddhism  is  a  religion  of  unquestioning  faith.  Not  only  is 
the  doctrine  of  transmigration  accepted  on  faith,1  but  the 
authority  of  Buddha  and  of  his  law  is  not  to  be  disputed  for 
a  moment.  The  Veda  is  not  more  holy  to  the  Brahman 
than  is  the  word  of  Buddha  to  the  Buddhist. 

Buddha  scoffed  at  the  idea  of  a  Creator  and  denied  the 
existence  of  a  soul.  He  probably  believed,  however,  in 
gods,  godlings,  spirits,  and  the  usual  demons  of  his  age, 
perhaps  accepting  them  merely  because  they  were  not  worth 
arguing  about.  What  he  taught  as  essential  was  the  rem- 
edy for  the  grief  of  existence.  This  is  embodied  in  the 
Four  Truths:  i,  Birth  and  death  are  grief;  2,  this  grief 

western,  Buddhism  an  eastern  product,  centuries  later  than  the  ear- 
liest Upanishads  (p.  288).  He  also  thinks  that  Buddha  knew  the 
(western)  Sankhya  philosophy  only  by  hearsay.  Jacobi,  on  the  other 
hand,  opines  that  Buddhist  categories  reflect  the  Sankhya. 

i  It  has  been  questioned  whether  Buddha  himself  taught  the 
Karma  doctrine.  The  Four  Truths  (below)  ignore  it.  But  the 
doctrine  was  accepted  by  all  Buddhists  as  orthodox  dogma. 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  185 

of  existence  is  occasioned  by  desire  ("thirst") ;  3,  it  ends 
when  desire  ends;  4,  desire  may  be  extinguished  if  one 
follows  Buddha's  Eight  Rules,  couched  in  the  formula: 
Right  belief,  right  resolve,  right  word,  right  act,  right  life, 
right  effort,  right  thought,  right  meditation.  Following 
these  eight  precepts  one  attains  to  extinction,  Nirvana,  of 
desire  and  its  fruit.  This  extinction  may  be  attained  in 
life  here,  so  that  one  may  "  enter  Nirvana  "  while  still  on 
earth.  The  condition  of  Nirvana  is  as  negative  as  the 
Brahma  of  the  priestly  philosophers.  Buddha  himself 
studiously  avoided  all  opportunities  to  explain  Nirvana, 
though  many  were  offered  him,  and  explicitly  declared  that 
the  less  people  indulged  in  vain  imaginings  as  to  life  here- 
after the  better.  This  alone  shows  that  the  speculative 
metaphysics  of  liberal  Buddhism  is  not  based  on  the  Mas- 
ter's thought  or  utterance.  Primitive  Buddhism  has  a  psy- 
chology (of  a  sort)  but  no  metaphysics  and  no  eschatology. 
It  is  simply  a  rationalistic  ethical  system,  teaching  that  every 
man  may  be  his  own  saviour. 

The  value  of  Buddhism  as  a  religion  does  not  lie  in  its 
originality,  for  the  "  desire  "  motif  is  pre-Buddhistic,1  nor 
in  its  psychology,  which,  though  curious,  is  valueless,  but  in 
what  Buddha  considered  as  of  the  slightest  importance,  its 
moral  excellence.  Buddha  frequently  insisted  upon  moral- 
ity but  only  as  the  first  plunge  into  the  stream  carrying  one 
to  salvation.  Yet,  seen  at  this  distance,  what  Buddha  be- 
littled becomes  the  corner-stone  of  his  own  worth.  For 
amid  the  ethical  chaos  of  a  time  when  to  be  a  noble  or  a 
divine  was  to  be  noble  and  divine ;  when  only  a  philosopher 
could  attain  salvation;  when  even  philosophers  were  de- 

1  As  this  is  often  ignored,  it  may  be  well  to  point  out  that  the 
Upanishad  series  kama  kratu  karma  implies  that  only  he  dies  not 
(again)  who  desires  not.  "Desire,  determination,  deed"  (and 
death)  is  what  is  meant  by  the  series.  Desire  leads  to  will  (deter- 
mination), this  to  acts,  and  this  to  continual  new  fruit  and  death. 
But  he  who  is  without  desire  dies  not  at  all ;  he  "  enters  Brahma  " 
(becomes  one  with  the  Absolute  Being).  Brihad  Ar.  Upanishad, 
iv.  4,  5f- 


l86  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

cadent  antinomians ; A  when  the  common  man  had  no  hope 
of  salvation  save  through  magical  ceremonies;  when  spir- 
ituality was  submerged  under  ritual,  and  ethics  had  scarcely 
any  religious  basis  —  then  Buddha  arose  and  said : 
"  Enough  of  rites  that  no  one  understands  in  honour  of 
useless  spirits.  Every  man  makes  his  own  fate.  I  preach 
simple  truths;  I  have  no  esoteric  doctrine.  My  Way  is 
open  to  all,  to  the  lowly  as  to  the  exalted.  Not  high  birth 
makes  a  man  a  (true)  Brahman  —  he  uses  this  word  ex- 
actly as  if  one  should  say  a  worthy  Christian  —  not  birth, 
not  wealth,  not  learning  make  a  man  worthy,  but  a  pure 
heart,  a  good  character,  a  noble  aim  in  life.  This  alone 
makes  a  man  worthy ;  but  to  be  greedy,  passionate,  a  slave 
of  lusts,  desirous  of  vain  and  wrong  things,  is  to  miss  the 
first  step  toward  emancipation.  Better  is  a  slave  who  lives 
nobly  than  a  noble  who  lives  slavishly."  In  this  Buddha 
was  original.  In  denying  soul  and  God,  he  was  but  one  of 
many  contemporary  unbelievers. 

Though  Buddha  was  born  an  aristocrat  and  associated 
with  his  equals,  he  laid  no  stress  on  caste  and  so  admitted 
into  his  order  those  of  low  birth.  If  we  may  believe  the 
artless  tradition,  even  thieves  and  robbers  became  hypo- 
thetical Buddhists  (as  murderers  in  the  Middle  Ages  fled 
to  the  altar),  since  the  Buddhist  mendicants  were  immune 
from  punishment.  All  this  made  for  democracy,  though 
it  was  not  Buddha's  intent  to  assail  the  political  and  social 
order.  Caste  at  that  time  and  in  his  part  of  the  country, 
round  about  Benares,  was  not  the  onerous  burden  it  has 
since  become,  but  a  natural  division  of  the  people  into  royal 
(and  noble),  priestly,  mercantile,  farming,  and  slave  classes. 
Buddha  lived  on  perfectly  good  terms  with  the  Brahmans, 
who  had  been  accustomed  for  generations  to  hear  all  theories 
of  life  discussed  and  were  themselves  the  chief  innovators 
of  ideas  in  the  realm  of  metaphysics  and  psychology.  The 
only  Brahmans  condemned  as  Brahmans  by  Buddha  were 

i  Four  of  the  eight  philosophical  systems  to  which  Buddha  ob- 
jected were  opposed  to  morality  (professedly  "incontinent"). 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  187 

those  who  pretended  to  worth  on  the  strength  of  birth.  He 
taught  the  people  the  plain  rules  of  conduct  conducive  to 
emancipation,  emphasizing  above  all  the  impermanence  of 
all  constituent  things,  the  non-reality  of  "  soul,"  and  the 
need  of  suppressing  "  thirst,"  that  is,  of  extinguishing  the 
craving  for  a  heavenly  existence  and  its  delights,  which 
is  detrimental  to  a  calm  and  reasonable  life  on  earth.  His 
Eight  Precepts  showed  how  such  a  life  might  be  attained. 
"  Right  belief  "  means  that  one  must  not  blindly  accept 
traditional  teaching  in  regard  to  "  soul "  and  other  beliefs. 
"  Right  resolve  "  means  that  one  must  be  of  a  lofty  mind. 
"  Right  life  and  effort "  mean  that  one  should  so  live  as  not 
to  injure  other  living  creatures ;  one  should  learn  to  control 
oneself. 

The  old  thought  of  the  Upanishads  was  that  the  universe 
is  a  whole  and  that  individuality,  enforced  by  rebirth,  implies 
ignorance,  which  results  in  sorrow;  but  in  Buddha's  con- 
ception the  thought  is  rather  that  the  release  from  individ- 
uality ends  the  struggle  of  existence,  which  it  is  a  gain  to 
lose  altogether,  for  its  grief  is  great.  It  remained  for  the 
later  church  to  rediscover  the  gain  of  continuing  to  live  in  a 
higher  form  of  life. 

According  to  the  creed  ascribed  to  Buddha,  error  is  a 
state  of  bondage  represented  by  ten  "  fetters  "  or  delusions, 
which  a  Buddhist  must  unfasten.  These  impediments  of 
truth  are  not  only  the  delusions  of  ignorance,  self -righteous- 
ness, pride,  and  the  desire  for  future  life  in  a  bodiless  or 
embodied  form,  in  heaven  or  on  earth,  but  also  the  delu- 
sions of  ill-will  and  lust,  and,  further,  three  most  important 
delusions,  first,  the  belief  in  soul,  second,  the  lack  of  belief 
in  Buddha  as  a  guide,  or  in  the  law,  order,  and  training, 
or  in  Karma,  and  thirdly,  the  belief  that  rites  and  ceremonies 
are  a  means  of  emancipation.  To  doubt  the  Buddha,  his 
law  and  order  and  the  training  enjoined  by  him,  and  the 
doctrine  of  Karma,  is  entered  as  one  "  fetter  of  doubt " 
and  is  regarded  as  the  most  important  delusion  next  to  the 
belief  in  a  soul. 


1 88  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

As  Buddha  did  not  believe  in  soul,  he  had  in  reality  no 
psychology,  for  there  was  no  psyche.  The  Brahmans  be- 
lieved in  a  special  entity,  defined  as  being  the  size  of  a 
thumb,  concealed  in  the  body  and  called  the  real  Self  or 
soul,  Atman,  the  Ego.  Buddha  said  that  there  was  no  such 
soul,  only  a  complex  or  confection  of  thought  and  feeling, 
all  the  qualities  and  capabilities  of  this  confection  being 
expressed  as  form,  sensation,  conception  (perception),  dis- 
crimination (or  action),  and  consciousness  (or  sense). 
This  quasi  Self  begins  its  career  conditioned  by  Karma, 
which  comes  from  a  former  life  and  is  due  to  ignorance. 
This  leads  to  a  predisposition  to  action  and  to  action  itself ; 
and  this,  again,  to  consciousness  ("recognition").  Con- 
sciousness, one  of  the  elements  of  this  Self,  is  then  the 
prius  to  self -consciousness  or  individuality  ("name  and 
form  ")  ;  from  which  comes  the  group  of  senses,  producing 
touch,  which  leads  to  sensation.  Out  of  sensation  comes 
desire,  and  from  desire  comes  attachment,  from  which,  in 
turn,  arises  a  state  of  becoming,  leading  to  actual  being  and 
birth,  and,  finally,  from  birth  comes  pain  (grief).  As  a 
chain  of  causation  explaining  individual  existence  this  con- 
geries has  obvious  defects.  Ignorance  must  have  come  from 
a  previous  birth,  for  ignorance  of  the  Four  Truths  is  in- 
tended, as  the  only  alternative  is  to  suppose  that  ignorance 
implies  the  doctrine  of  cosmic  illusion.  But  as  the  first 
link  in  the  chain  leading  to  being,  it  cannot  explain  being 
which  it  presupposes.  Who  or  what  possesses  ignorance 
before  possessing  consciousness?  The  usual  discourse  on 
the  Four  Truths  and  Eight  Precepts  does  not  suggest  the 
necessity  of  going  back  of  "  desire  "  as  an  explanation  of 
existence.  The  chain  appears  to  be  an  attempt  to  foist  a 
Yoga  scheme  upon  an  original  Buddhistic  scheme.  Some 
texts  make  consciousness  the  first  link  in  the  chain.  But 
though  the  scheme  may  not  be  Buddha's  own,  the  belief 
in  Karma  must  belong,  if  not  to  him,  at  least  to  the  early 
teachers,  as  it  permeates  Buddhism.  One  of  the  Nikayas 
(Anguttara)  says:  "Deeds  ripen;  when  they  ripen  one 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  189 

experiences  the  fruit  thereof,  either  in  the  present  or  in  a 
subsequent  life."  This  is  quite  Brahmanistic  in  its  clarity 
as  to  Karma  and  its  fruit. 

Desire  in  this  philosophy  means  a  craving  for  the  satis- 
faction of  living,  leading  to  attachment  to  the  world  and 
life.  It  is  not  love  or  passion,  but  the  two  are  included  un- 
der it.  Many  passages  show  that,  to  the  Buddhist  mendi- 
cant, love  and  even  affection  were  as  dangerous  as  passion. 
He  must  break  all  home  ties;  must  not  be  fettered  by  a 
love  of  family  any  more  than  by  a  love  of  woman.  Buddha 
himself  set  the  example  of  abandoning  those  who  loved  him. 
Desire  is  legitimate  and  even  needful  when  it  means  the 
desire  of  a  better  life,  the  desire  of  emancipation;  but  all 
ties  including  earthly  love  must  be  got  rid  of :  "  He  who 
is  free  from  love  is  free  from  grief  and  fear."  Buddha 
was  afraid  of  women,  regarding  them  as  "  torches  that 
light  the  road  to  hell,"  and  only  protestingly  permitted  them 
to  enter  the  order.  But  there  was  no  restriction  put  upon 
the  laymen  regarding  marriage,  though  love  was  felt  to  be 
an  obstacle  to  his  release.  The  Buddhist  in  general,  whether 
mendicant  or  layman,  is  enjoined  to  have  an  all-embracing 
compassion  and  pity  rather  than  love  for  others.  Every 
excess,  even  of  sentiment,  is  deprecated.  One  must  follow 
the  Middle  Way,  avoid  all  extremes,  not  be  very  ascetic 
nor  too  prone  to  pleasure.  It  is  a  reasonable  doctrine  and 
the  disciples  are  not  at  all  unhappy.  They  loudly  delight  in 
their  lives  of  "  joy  without  enemies,  health  among  those 
that  are  ill."  Their  pure  pleasure  is  in  feeling  that  they 
are  free  from  the  burden  of  fear,  superstition,  and  cere- 
monies. They  can  even  attain  the  perfect  state  of  extinc- 
tion of  evil  (desire  and  its  fruit)  in  this  life.  They  do  not 
look  forward  to  another,  but,  like  philosophers,  calmly  con- 
tent await  the  end. 

There  is,  however,  another  side  to  this  peaceful  serenity. 
The  primitive  Buddhist  of  this  sort  is  almost  too  self-con- 
tained, too  cold,  too  fond  of  rejoicing  in  his  own  health 
when  others  are  ill.  He  appears  to  be  a  sensible  but  very 


19°  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

selfish  individual.  He  saves  himself  alone.  He  recognizes 
no  obligation  toward  others  save  the  negative  one  of  not 
injuring  them.  He  embraces  all  in  his  rather  contemptu- 
ous "  pity,"  but  he  is  far  from  exerting  himself  to  aid  any 
one.  Each  for  himself,  is  his  creed.  Buddha,  he  believed, 
renounced  his  own  emancipation  to  preach  to  others;  but 
it  does  not  occur  to  the  primitive  disciple  to  do  more  than 
preach  in  the  present.  He  has  no  ambition  to  be  born  again 
for  the  good  of  mankind.  He  lives  to  become  a  Worthy 
(Arhat),  one  worthy  to  escape  the  coil  of  life. 

In  the  course  of  time  this  began  to  seem  rather  a  narrow 
view  and  by  the  second  (perhaps  third)  century  B.  c.  the 
tendency  to  imitate  the  Master  affected  the  church  and 
later  led  to  division  of  doctrine,  eventually  causing  the  rise 
of  the  school  known  as  Mahayana,  Great  Vehicle.  The 
Bodhisattvas,  as  the  adherents  of  this  school  termed  them- 
selves, basing  their  belief  on  a  reputed  saying  of  Buddha, 
held  that  Gautama  Buddha  was  only  one  of  a  series  of 
Buddha-existences,  who  had  given  up  felicity  to  aid  the 
world  and  save  others.  All  men  may  become  Bodhisats, 
"creatures  of  wisdom,"  and  this  accordingly  is  the  goal 
they  ought  to  seek.  Each  should  follow  the  Master  and 
like  him  save  others.  Altruistic  as  was  this  aim,  it  was 
looked  upon  at  first  as  rather  an  ideal  than  a  practical 
procedure  and  the  Mahayana  way  was  more  praised  than 
pursued  (circa  200  B.C.).  But  with  this  idea  of  self-sac- 
rifice went  also  a  different  conception  regarding  Buddha. 
He  was  now  no  longer  looked  upon  as  a  mere  man  but  as 
a  superman;  his  birth,  it  was  said,  was  accompanied  by 
flowers  falling  from  heaven ;  at  his  death  the  earth  quaked ; 
his  mother  was  a  virgin,  his  birth  was  immaculate ;  in  short 
he  became  a  supernatural  being.  This  thought,  that  Buddha 
was  more  than  man,  probably  began  soon  after  the  Mas- 
ter's death  and  by  the  time  of  Ashoka,  in  the  third  century 
B.  c.,  it  was  not  only  established  but  embellished,  while 
every  century  added  to  the  tale,  so  that  both  the  Hina  and 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  Ipl 

Maha  (Little  and  Great)  Vehicles  devoutly  believed  in 
Buddha's  supramundane  powers  and  excellencies. 

When  to  this  was  added  the  idea  that  to  be  a  Worthy 
(Arhat)  was  really  an  unworthy  aim,  that  any  one  might 
become  a  Bodhisat,  and  that,  when  a  birth  or  two  more 
had  loosened  the  last  tie,  one  might  even  become  a  Buddha, 
the  way  was  open  to  the  creation  of  endless  superhuman 
beings  of  Bodhisat  and  Buddha  nature.  Naturally,  too,  the 
Bodhisat  in  embryo  rather  looked  down  upon  the  unworthy 
Worthy.  Then  he  began  to  taunt  the  Worthy  and  called 
his  brother's  faith  and  school  the  Defective  School  (Ve- 
hicle) or  the  Little  as  compared  with  his  own  Great  School; 
though  it  was  not  for  centuries  that  the  Great  Vehicle 
showed  numerical  superiority  to  the  Little  Vehicle.  In  the 
sixth  century  A.  D.,  the  disciples  of  the  old  school  still  made 
two-thirds  of  the  church. 

While  these  schools  divided  the  church,  they  did  not 
cause  a  schism.  All  were  still  one  flock,  though  they  were 
in  very  different  folds.  In  some  regards  the  Great  Vehicle 
became  a  better  vehicle  of  religion  than  that  of  the  primitive 
church.  It  had  a  higher  ideal;  it  developed  a  new  phi- 
losophy, which  practically  taught  the  existence  of  a  saviour 
and  a  God.  But  in  its  emphasis  on  the  spiritual  side,  it 
neglected  the  mental  discipline  and  self-control  of  the  older 
school  and  lost  itself  in  fantastic  imaginings.  It  won  its 
ideal  from  idealism,  which  it  apparently  borrowed  from 
Brahmanic  philosophy.  The  primitive  church  had  three  ar- 
ticles of  faith  embodied  in  the  confession  of  the  neo- 
phyte :  "  I  believe  in  Buddha,  as  a  sure  guide,  in  the 
Dharma  (the  law  of  Buddha),  and  in  the  Sangha  (church)." 
The  "  body  of  the  law  "  was  to  the  early  church  a  literal 
body  of  law,  or  at  most  it  was  the  Buddha  still  incarnate, 
so  to  speak,  in  his  doctrines.  But  the  word  dharma, 
meaning  "  support,"  meant  not  only  the  hold,  the  law,  but 
also  the  thing  that  holds,  even  the  substance,  and,  as  it  were, 
playing  on  the  last  meaning,  the  Great  Vehicle  interpreted 


192  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

this  Dharmakaya  (body  of  dharma)  as  the  eternal  being 
or  support  and  substance  of  the  world  (what  other  systems 
call  the  Absolute).  Moreover,  this  school  taught  not  only 
that  Karma  might  affect  others  as  well  as  one's  self,  but 
even  that  it  might  be  transferred  from  one  individual  to 
another;  more  strictly,  that  the  merit  obtained  by  Karma 
might  in  the  infinite  mercy  of  a  Bodhisat  serve  as  a  kind 
of  vicarious  atonement.  Buddha  taught,  according  to  the 
old  texts,  that  Nirvana  was  the  extinction  of  desire  and 
its  fruits  (individuality,  rebirth)  and  likened  this  extinction 
to  that  of  a  lamp :  "  What  remains  when  the  flame  is  ex- 
tinguished ? "  To  him,  metaphysical  questions,  even  the 
question  whether  man  lived  at  all  hereafter,  were  "  walking 
in  the  jungle  of  delusions."  He  said  most  emphatically, 
when  pressed  for  an  answer :  "  When  one  who  is  delivered 
from  individuality  dies,  he  goes  out  like  a  flame  and  can- 
not be  regarded  as  existent.  That  by  which  they  say  he  is, 
exists  for  him  no  more."  He  acknowledged  no  Supreme 
Being,  who  is  all  intelligence  and  love,  such  as  the  "  Body 
of  Dharma  "  is  conceived  by  the  late  Mahayana.  The  Little 
Vehicle  made  Buddha  the  Tathagata,  "  he  who  has  arrived 
(at  the  goal)."  The  Great  Vehicle  made  him  a  form  of  the 
Bhuta-tathata  or  Godhead  as  ultimate  postulate  of  existence. 
This  interpretation  is  probably  not  older  than  the  fifth  cen- 
tury A.  D.  In  it  the  Absolute  appears  in  three  forms,  a  kind 
of  trinity,  first  as  the  "  Body  of  transformation,"  that  is,  as 
the  historic  but  divine  Buddha  in  the  flesh ;  then  as  an  infinite 
yet  corporeal  "  Body  of  Bliss  "  (answering  to  the  concep- 
tion of  God  as  a  person)  ;  and  then  as  a  "  Body  of  Exist- 
ence," the  Godhead  or  Ultimate.  It  (now  He)  appears  as 
a  supramundane  power  in  the  form  of  Amitabha,  endless 
light,  Amitayus,  endless  life,  Vairocana,  the  glory  or 
sun,  Maitreya,  the  loving  one,  names  of  Buddhas,  exist- 
ing or  to  come,  as  forms  of  the  principle  of  existence.  Ac- 
cording to  the  Mahayana,  the  cosmic  unity  called  "  Body 
of  Existence  "  is  an  object  of  religious  veneration  and  wor- 
ship, for  it  is  a  spiritual  existence ;  it  has  thought  and  action 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  IQ3 

and  will.  It  may  appear  anywhere  on  earth  as  a  particular 
being,  Buddha  or  any  other  sage,  so  that  modern  adherents 
of  this  school  regard  Christ  and  Confucius  as  such  par- 
ticular forms  of  the  Dharmakaya.  Any  man,  though  sub- 
ject to  organic  laws,  may  be  or  must  be  a  part  of  this  tran- 
scendental intelligence.  It  is  thus,  in  Brahmanic  language, 
"  qualified  "  or  "  non-qualified."  As  the  latter,  it  cannot 
be  defined,  for  to  define  is  to  confine,  to  limit,  and  it  is 
illimitable.  It  is  a  void,  emptiness,  as  transcending  form, 
a  "  vast  vacuity  and  nothing  holy,"  as  the  prince  of  Benares 
said  when  interrogated  by  the  Chinese  emperor,  a  no-ness, 
reminding  one  of  the  "no,  no"  (negation)  of  the  Upani- 
shads  when  explaining  Brahma.  Yet  this  no-ness  is  the 
fountain-head  of  wisdom  and  compassion  and  as  such  cor- 
responds to  God.  Naturally,  with  this  view  of  the  Bod- 
hisat  and  the  Dharma,  was  associated  the  soul-theory,  which 
to  Buddha  was  anathema.  It  was,  in  fact,  current  soon 
after  his  death,  for  "  soul-view  "  is  expressly  stated  to  be 
a  heresy  of  the  early  church,  and  it  afterwards  became  a 
general  belief.  Yet  some  Buddhist  philosophers  repudiated 
not  only  the  soul  of  the  individual  but,  in  their  later  discus- 
sions, extended  the  anatman,  non-soul,  theory  even  to  a  re- 
pudiation of  the  noumenal  reality  of  existence. 

The  Bodhisat  cannot  rest  in  the  bliss  of  Nirvana  but  must 
satisfy  his  unselfish  heart  by  saving  others  through  various 
means,  such  as  giving  over  his  accumulated  merit.  As  a 
Buddha,  this  being  can  manifest  himself  everywhere  at 
once;  light  streams  from  his  forehead;  he  appears  like  an 
angel,  but  not  as  a  "  messenger  "  of  another,  for  he  acts 
of  his  own  volition.  To  attain  this  state,  however,  the 
aspirant  must  pass  through  ten  stages.  In  distinction  from 
the  primitive  Hinayanist  (adherent  of  the  Little  Vehicle), 
the  Bodhisat  may  be  termed  the  liberal  Buddhist,  not  wholly 
on  account  of  his  faith  but  because  of  his  general  attitude. 
The  primitive  is  a  formalist.  His  law  says  "  kill  not,"  and 
the  Little-brother  will  not  go  to  war.  But  the  Great- 
brother  fights;  he  also  mingles  with  the  world  and  even 


194  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ventures  to  define  Nirvana  itself  as  "the  flow  of  life  and 
death,"  yas  samaras  tat  nirvanam.1  Sin  and  evil  are  to 
him  but  phases  of  Nirvana,  which  is  the  purification  of 
existence.  Thus  Nirvana  may  appear  as  the  Absolute,  as 
when  Nirvana  is  one  with  Dharmakaya,  or  in  the  form 
attained  by  men,  with  a  residue  of  pain,  or  in  a  form  of 
supramundane  bliss,  also  attainable  by  men,  where  the 
pain  of  birth  has  ceased,  or,  finally,  in  the  form  attainable 
only  by  a  Buddha,  in  which  intellectual  prejudice,  the  hard- 
est tie,  and  all  other  fetters  have  been  broken.  Not  all  jthe 
Mahayanists  hold  all  these  views.  Some  are  Nihilists  and 
some  belong  to  the  Yogacara  sect,  a  purely  ideal  monism, 
for  like  the  early  church  the  Great  Vehicle  has  different 
schools  within  itself.  Another,  though  slighter,  difference 
between  the  teachings  of  the  two  main  bodies  may  be  no- 
ticed. The  doctrine  of  the  Middle  Way  always  meant  to 
the  Hina  school  what  Buddha  repeatedly  declared  it  to  be, 
a  mean  between  indulgence  in  material  pleasures  and  ascet- 
icism. The  Mahayana  interprets  it  as  a  mean  between  ex- 
cess of  sentimentality  and  excess  of  intellectuality.  A  rea- 
sonable avoidance  of  sensuality  and  of  self-torturing  ascet- 
icism is  thus  converted  into  the  avoidance  of  too  great  in- 
tellectual effort  as  well  as  of  hedonism. 

We  must  notice  here  the  fact  that  the  most  striking  paral- 
lels between  the  narrative  or  legendary  elements  of  Bud- 
dhism and  Christianity  come  from  the  later  Buddhist  his- 
tories, some  of  which  belong  to  a  period  long  after  the 
Christian  era.  Certain  stories  are  common  to  both  Bud- 
dhist and  Christian  tradition  and  were  probably  developed 
independently  in  each.  A  very  few  offer  parallels  so  close 
as  to  make  it  quite  possible  that  one  church  has  borrowed 
from  the  other.  Popular  books  on  the  subject  are  apt  to 
exaggerate  both  the  number  and  character  of  cogent  paral- 
lels, while  minimizing  the  important  factor  of  dates,  as 
when,  to  support  the  thesis  that  Christianity  borrowed 

1  For  this  reason  no  one  definition  defines  Nirvana.  It  was  literal 
extinction  to  Buddha,  but  to  Buddhism  it  became  bliss  and  heaven. 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  195 

from  Buddhism,  it  is  stated  that  Buddha  preached  so  that 
all  who  heard  him,  no  matter  what  the  hearer's  mother- 
tongue,  could  understand.  This  gift  of  tongues  is  indeed 
suggestive  of  a  loan,  but  as  it  is  first  found  in  a  Ceylonese 
work  of  the  thirteenth  century  the  borrower  cannot  have 
been  a  Christian.  Jataka  parallels  are  all  taken  from  a 
"  History  of  Buddha's  Previous  Births,"  which  dates  from 
the  fifth  century  A.  D.,  though  containing,  of  course,  older 
matter.  But  if  a  parallel  occurs  only  in  the  Jataka  prose, 
as  we  have  it  now,  it  cannot  be  assumed  that  it  is  pre- 
Christian.  The  Presentation  in  the  Temple  is  a  parallel  of 
uncertain  date,  but  only  later  writers  make  the  child  to  be 
"  twelve  years  of  age,"  apparently  borrowing  from  Chris- 
tian tradition.  The  fast  and  temptation  in  the  original  form 
differ  materially  from  the  later.  The  fast  was  one  of 
twenty-eight  days;  later  tradition  made  it  forty-nine  days. 
When  we  consider  that  a  forty-days'  fast  is  quite  Jewish,  it 
does  not  seem  reasonable  to  draw  the  conclusion  that 
Buddha's  fast  was  converted  by  a  loan  into  that  of  Christ. 
Buddha's  temptation  by  the  Evil  One  (Death)  is  certainly 
much  older  than  the  story  of  Christ's  temptation  by  Satan 
and  it  is  historically  possible  that  the  Christian  story  was 
borrowed;  but  again  it  may  have  been  independently  con- 
ceived. Finally,  some  of  these  parallels  are  plain  fakes, 
invented  for  popular  delusion,  such  as  the  statements  that 
Buddha  was  born  on  Dec.  25th  and  began  to  preach  at  the 
age  when  Christ  began  to  preach.  Buddha  was  thirty-five 
or  thirty-six  when  he  began  to  preach  (he  spent  seven  years 
in  study  after  deserting  his  family)  and  his  birthday  is 
unknown.1 

1  This  loan-question  is,  in  any  event,  not  important.  It  is  an  his- 
torical problem  concerning  minor  details  of  the  intercourse  between 
Christianity  and  Buddhism,  affecting  no  fundamental  truths  or 
teachings  in  either  religion.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church,  doubtless 
by  accident,  has  admitted  a  form  of  Buddha  into  its  list  of  saints  and 
such  later  loans  may  well  have  followed  earlier  loans.  They  begin 
to  be  probable  in  the  Apocryphal  Gospels  of  the  second  century,  at 
which  time  there  really  seems  to  have  been  Buddhistic  influence,  felt 
and  retained  by  the  Christian  Church.  Christianity  appears  to  have 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

The  Buddhist  church  as  a  religious  machine  was  of  im- 
mense value.  The  earlier  Brahmans  had  no  congregation, 
no  body,  no  authoritative  head;  they  were  a  heterogeneous 
group  of  mutually  antagonistic  sages  and  priests,  forever 
rivalling  and  belittling  each  other,  without  closer  connex- 
ion than  a  loose  caste-relation.  Buddha  founded  a  church 
which  made  a  compact  organization.  Each  congregation 
locally  met  twice  a  month  to  confess  faults  and  later  showed 
respect  or  worship  of  Buddha  by  erecting  tumuli  over  his 
supposed  remains  and  offering  flowers  there.  The  mendi- 
cants were  vowed  to  moderate  privation,  could  not  accept 
gold,  had  to  sleep  on  the  floor,  might  not  use  garlands  and 
perfumes,  nor  eat  at  night.  The  lay  brother  and  mendicant 
both  were  vowed  to  ordinary  rules  of  morality:  not  to  kill, 
steal,  lie,  or  drink  intoxicants;  to  be  pure,  abstemious,  and 
to  abstain  from  plays,  dancing,  and  singing  (probably  more 
or  less  immoral).  The  mendicant  might  leave  the  order  and 
join  it  again  at  pleasure.  While  a  mendicant,  he  begged  his 
food  daily  and  devoted  the  rest  of  his  time  to  meditation  or 
suitable  conversation.  The  early  Buddhists  were  not  strict 
vegetarians,  as  they  became  later. 

Adopted  as  a  state  religion  about  the  middle  of  the  third 
century  B.  c.,  Buddhism  was  soon  introduced  in  the  primi- 

penetrated  into  India  before  300  A.  D.  Christian  docetic  doctrine 
may  have  been  affected  by  Hindu  philosophy.  Garbe  years  ago 
rightly  made  a  distinction  between  the  N.  T.  Gospels  and  the  Apo- 
cryphal Gospels :  "  The  narratives  of  the  canonical  Gospels  which 
accord  with  Buddhist  stories  do  not  at  all  bear  a  specifically  Bud- 
dhistic or  even  a  specifically  Indian  character ;  their  origin  is  entirely 
comprehensible  without  the  hypothesis  of  an  Indian  derivation.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  stories  of  the  Apocryphal  Gospels,  parallels 
to  which  exist  in  Buddhist  literature,  shows  genuine  features  of 
India's  romantic  lore."  Contributions,  Chicago,  1911,  p.  I.  See  on 
this  subject  the  author's  India  Old  and  New,  p.  I25f.,  and  more  re- 
cently the  less  probable  speculations  of  Garbe,  Indien  und  das 
Christentum,  Tubingen,  1914;  also  the  searching  criticism  of  Vallee 
Poussin  in  the  Revue  des  sciences  phil.  et  theol.,  1912,  and  Kennedy 
in  the  Journ.  Royal  Asiat.  Soc.,  1917.  Of  the  four  "  parallels  "  now 
recognized  by  Garbe,  two  are  not  found  till  c.  500  A.  D.,  the  third  may 
be  as  late,  and  the  fourth  (the  temptation)  is  of  very  general 
character. 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  197 

tive  form  to  Ceylon  and  the  East ;  in  both  forms  it  came  to 
China  in  the  first  centuries  after  our  era  and  to  Korea  and 
Japan  from  the  second  to  the  sixth  centuries  A.  D.  Burma 
and  Siam,  where  it  was  introduced  in  the  fifth  and  seventh 
centuries,  A.  D.,  respectively,  alone  keep  the  primitive  form 
of  Buddhism,  though  in  Burma  the  Buddhists  today  are 
really  animists.  Ceylon  now  has  a  mixed  type,  originally 
primitive  but  overlaid  with  liberal  doctrine. 

The  literature  of  both  Vehicles  is  enormous  and  can  here 
be  sketched  only  in  outline.  The  canon  of  the  primitive 
church  consists  of  three  collections  (Pitakas)  called  Dis- 
cipline (Vinaya),  Logia  (Sutta),  and  Mental  Conditions 
(Abhidhamma),  to  which  as  supplements  are  appended  the 
Jatakas  (Birth  Stories),  and  various  bodies  of  songs  and 
aphorisms,  such  as  the  Hymns  of  the  Elders  (Theragathas) 
and  the  Path  of  Religion  (Dhammapada).  There  are  so- 
called  histories  (Vamshas)  of  Buddha  and  of  the  Ceylon 
branch  of  the  primitive  church  and  a  heterogeneous  epical 
history  of  Buddha  called  the  Mahavastu  containing  much 
late  material  of  stories  and  marvels,  dating  in  its  entirety 
from  the  first  to  the  fourth  century  of  our  era.  Ashvagh- 
osha,  a  great  poet  of  the  first  or  second  century  A.  D.  (pos- 
sibly later),  wrote  a  Life  of  Buddha  in  poetic  form,  of 
which  a  part  only  is  extant.  The  author  was  a  converted 
Brahman  of  the  Little  Vehicle,  who  afterwards  formulated 
or  adopted  the  principles  of  the  Great  Vehicle,  laying  great 
weight  on  bhakti,  loving  devotion  to  Buddha  as  a  divine 
saviour,  an  element  foreign  to  primitive  Buddhism.  He 
may  be  the  author  of  the  Awakening  of  Faith  (Shrad- 
dhotpada),  translated  into  Chinese  in  the  sixth  century. 
Another  writer  of  this  school  is  Buddhaghosha,  who,  be- 
sides commentaries,  wrote  (c.  500  A.  D.)  a  work  called  the 
Way  of  Purity  (Visuddhismagga).  The  Wonder  Tales 
(Avadana)  belong  to  both  schools.  The  most  important 
texts  of  the  Great  Vehicle  are  the  Lalita  Vistara  ("  Long 
account  of  the  Sport "  of  Buddha  as  a  godlike  being)  and 
the  Sad-dharma-pundarika  (Lotus  of  the  True  Law).  The 


198  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

former  appears  to  be  a  revision  and  extension  of  a  Hina 
text  compiled  by  sundry  authors  from  the  second  or  third 
century  to  the  fourth  or  fifth,  possibly  the  sixth,  century 
A.  D.  In  it  Buddha  is  surrounded  by  33,000  Bodhisats  and 
knows  sixty-four  alphabets,  including  those  of  the  Huns 
and  Chinese !  The  Lotus  was  known  to  Fahien,  a  Chinese 
pilgrim,  circa  400  A.  D.,  and  was  probably  composed  a  couple 
of  centuries  earlier.  It  is  one  of  the  nine  late  texts  of  the 
Great  Vehicle,  revealing  a  very  advanced  state  of  religious 
art  and  representing  Buddha  as  God  (Creator  of  the  world 
and  self-existent),  whose  grace  alone  can  save.  Religion  in 
this  period  becomes  a  mere  act  of  devotion;  to  bow  to 
Buddha  is  all  that  is  necessary ;  all  else  rests  with  his  grace. 
The  Buddha  most  affected  in  the  Lotus  is  called  Avalo- 
kiteshvara,  "  looking  down  "  (with  pity),  while  in  the  Suk- 
havati  (Happy  Land),  another  text  of  this  school,  the  most 
praised  form  is  that  of  Amitabha  ("endless  glory"). 
These  two  are  the  texts  regarded  as  authoritative  in  the 
Shinshu  sect  of  Japan,  while  Manjushri,  a  Bodhisattva  next 
in  dignity  to  Avalokiteshvara,  is  the  ideal  of  the  Japanese 
Kegon  sect. 

In  reading  and  citing  from  this  literature  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  even  the  canon  of  the  primitive  church  was 
not  reduced  to  writing  till  long  after  the  time  of  Buddha, 
and  though  by  the  time  of  Ashoka  it  probably  existed  some- 
what as  it  is  now,  yet  no  mention  of  the  Tipitaka  (three- 
fold canon)  is  made  before  the  first  century  of  our  era, 
while  all  the  Great  Vehicle  texts  are  at  least  as  late  as  the 
first  or  second  century  after  Christ.  The  Jatakas  were  not 
reduced  to  writing  till  500  A.  D.  Passages  cited  from  the 
Lalita  Vistara,  for  example,  may  be  as  late  as  the  third, 
fourth,  or  even  sixth  century  A.  D.  Only  when  one  of 
these  late  texts  is  corroborated  by  other  irrefragable  evi- 
dence may  it  be  used  to  depict  Buddhistic  belief  of  the 
early  centuries  B.  c.  The  same  remark  applies,  though  not 
so  drastically,  to  the  canon  called  Tipitaka.  It  may  in  any 
one  case  indicate  the  belief  of  the  Buddhists  of  the  third 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  199 

century  B.  c.  and  it  may  not.  No  one  can  tell  what  addi- 
tions were  made  to  the  Pali  texts  *  before  they  became  what 
they  now  are.  Buddha's  own  Logia  were  not  in  the  same 
dialect  as  that  of  the  Pali  texts,  and  after  he  uttered  his 
sayings  centuries  elapsed  before  any  written  record  was 
made  of  them.  Still  less  is  it  probable  that  the  scholasticism 
of  the  Abhidhamma  reverts  to  the  fifth  century  B.  c.2  The 
philosophy  of  both  the  Little  and  Great  Schools  probably 
reflects  centuries  of  contact  with  Brahmanism  and  it  is  a 
significant  fact  that  the  greatest  Buddhist  philosophers  were 
converted  Brahmans  born  several  centuries  after  the  Chris- 
tian era. 

How  far  the  philosophy  of  Buddhism  represents  the  re- 
ligion at  all,  may  be  questioned.  Most  of  the  early  Bud- 
dhists seem  to  be  satisfied  with  the  simple  scheme  of  salva- 
tion, not  from  sin  but  from  life,  expounded  in  the  dis- 
courses of  Buddha.  But  the  thought  of  the  Brahmanic 
disciples  who  were  converted  to  the  Buddhistic  faith  in 
the  first  centuries  of  our  era  was  already  primed  with  their 
own  previous  philosophy,  just  as  that  of  the  Christian  Fa- 
thers of  the  third  century  was  primed  with  Greek  thought, 
and  their  adhesion  to  Buddhism  resulted  in  transforming  that 
faith  into  schools  of  philosophy  reflecting  Brahmanic  ideas. 
The  most  prominent  of  the  early  Mahayanists  was  a  Brah- 
man philosopher,  Nagarjuna,  who  lived  a  little  later  than 
Ashvaghosha,  possibly  in  the  second  century  A.  D.  He 
represents  the  Negativist  or  Nihilist  school  of  Madhyami- 
kas,3  who  deny  all  existence.  A  work  called  Prajnapara- 
mita  in  100,000  verses  is  ascribed  to  him.  This  work  and 

1  The    Little    Vehicle   texts    appear   chiefly    in    Pali,    a    conven- 
tionalized   dialect    of    the    Ceylon    branch;    Buddha    spoke    in    the 
Magadhi  dialect.    Most  of  the  Sanskrit  Buddhistic  works  belong  to 
the  Great  Vehicle. 

2  This  is  the  cool  assumption  made  in  a  recent  translation  of  the 
Abhidhamma.     It  is  about  as  reasonable  as  to  refer  to  Augustine's 
works  as  theology  of  the  year  one.     Buddha  was  of  the  fifth  cen- 
tury B.  c.,  but  Buddhistic  works  in  their  present  form  are  all  much 
later. 

3  See   for  this   school   L.   de   La  Vallee   Poussin,  Le  Buddhism, 


200  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  (Great  Vehicle  text)  Sukhavati-vyuha  are  said  to  have 
been  translated  into  Chinese  in  the  second  century  of  our 
era  (the  oldest  Chinese  translations  of  Buddhist  texts,  67 
A.  D.,  may  not  be  from  Mahayana  texts). 

Ashvaghosha  himself  was  perhaps  the  founder  of  the 
idealistic  school  of  the  Mahayana  called  Yogacara,  but  this 
is  usually  referred  to  the  later  Asanga.  The  doctrines  of 
this  school  derive  from  Brahmanic  Yoga  and  may  even 
have  been  influenced  by  Manichaean  and  later  Platonic 
ideas.  The  Bhumishastra  of  the  Yogacara  was  translated 
into  Chinese  before  421  A.  D.  and  this  work  is  ascribed  to 
Asanga.  If  not  the  founder  of  the  Yogacara,  Asanga  is 
at  least  its  representative  teacher.  His  school,  like  the 
Shunyavada  or  negativist  doctrine,  denies  phenomenal  exist- 
ence, but  it  recognizes  existence  in  thought,  and  hence  is 
called  idealistic  (it  may  be  called  a  dogmatic  realism).  On 
the  whole  we  may  set  the  systematic  exposition  of  the 
Yogacara  in  the  fourth  century  A.  D.  Asanga  was  active  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  fourth  and  first  half  of  the  fifth  cen- 
turies (375-450?).  Asanga  and  his  older  brother  Vasu- 
bandhu  were  Brahmans  of  the  Kaushika  school  and  were 
converted  to  Buddhism,  at  first  as  Hinayanists  of  the  Sar- 
vasti-vada,  which  affirms  that  "  all  exists."  x  Afterwards 

Paris,  1909,  p.  i89f.;  29of.  Nagarjuna's  school  founded  some  of  the 
far-eastern  sects. 

i  The  truth  between  extremes  is  professed  by  the  Middle  Path 
of  the  Mahayana.  Hinayana  divides  reality  into  phenomenal  and 
noumenal  (Nirvana)  spheres,  the  phenomenal  embracing  physical 
and  psychic,  both  physical  and  psychic  phenomena  having  objective 
reality,  but  as  impermanent  (in  flux).  The  noumenal  sphere, 
though  real,  is  void  of  phenomena.  Radical  Mahayana,  on  the 
other  hand,  denies  the  reality  of  the  phenomenal  world;  the  out- 
side world  is  mental  illusion;  even  the  self  (of  self-consciousness) 
has  no  real  existence;  of  the  noumenal  world  one  can  speak  only 
by  negations.  Conservative  Mahayana,  however,  regards  this  view 
as  extreme.  It  asserts  that  the  phenomenal  world  is  real  because 
it  is  one  with  the  noumenal  world.  It  manifests  the  noumenal  (but 
has  no  distinct  existence).  The  oneness  of  the  Real  (dharma  of 
non-duality)  is  the  only  thing  we  know  but  it  cannot  be  defined; 
whether  being  or  not-being  or  a  state  between  be  existence,  whether 
things  are  or  are  not  or  are  neither,  no  one  can  know. 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  2OI 

both  brothers  appear  as  Mahayanists.  Vasubandhu,  who 
is  said  to  have  been  converted  to  the  Mahayana  in  his  old 
age  by  Asanga,  commented  on  the  Lotus  and  other  texts. 
According  to  this  school,  the  foundation  of  all  psychic 
processes  is  Bodhi,  absolute  truth  and  saving  wisdom,  but 
this  is  attainable  only  for  one  who  has  practised  Yoga 
through  ten  grades  of  exercises  of  mystic  sort,  like  those 
practised  by  the  Brahmanic  Yogins.1 

Such  psychic  hygienic  exercises  really  aimed  at  getting 
Yoga-power  and  soon  became  mere  magical  practices,  in 
which  the  Mahayana  texts  were  used  as  magic  formulas, 
Dharanis.  This  led  straight  to  the  Tantric  cult,  wherein 
Buddhistic  saints  mingled  confusedly  with  Shivaite  gods 
and  goddesses,  especially  Tara,  a  goddess  and  "  female 
form"  of  Avalokiteshvara  (sixth  century).  The  most  im- 
portant Tantric  exercises  have  to  do  with  mystic  dia- 
grams, syllables,  hand-movements,  and  with  magical  rites 
on  the  eighth  day  of  the  half-months.  This  Tantra-yana  or 
third  school  of  Buddhism,  is  really  nothing  more  than  a 
combination  of  Shivaism,  with  its  animism  and  magic,  and 
Buddhistic  names.  It  no  more  deserves  to  be  called  a 
school  of  Buddhism  than  does  the  combination  of  Yoga  and 
deception,  or  ignorance,  which  today  calls  itself  Esoteric 
Buddhism.  But  worse  was  still  to  come. 

For  Buddhism  unhappily  did  not  die  in  its  glory  in  India, 
but  gradually  became  merged  with  forms  of  the  Brahmanic 
faith,  till  little  of  the  original  belief  was  left  in  the  west, 
while  in  the  east  and  north  it  was  perpetuated  under  new 
conditions,  generally  in  a  debased  form.  Yet  even  in  the 
ninth  and  tenth  centuries  there  were  Buddhist  kings  and 
a  Buddhist  temple  was  built  in  1276,  while  the  restoration 
of  the  shrine  at  Bodh  Gaya  in  1331  shows  that  the  old 
tradition  of  the  faith  still  survived.  As  late  as  the  six- 
teenth century  Buddhism  was  still  to  be  found  in  Bengal 
and  Orissa. 

1  See  the  Sutralamkara  (of  Asanga)  by  Sylvain  Levi,  2  vols., 
Paris,  1907-11. 


202  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

After  the  seventh  century,  however,  the  older  Yogacara 
tended  to  become  replaced  by  Mantra-yana,  a  school  which 
substituted  Mantras,  religious  formulas  conceived  in  sym- 
bolic syllables,  for  the  Dharanis.  This  in  turn  was  suc- 
ceeded by  the  so-called  Vajra-yana,  a  more  mystic  and  sen- 
sual interpretation  of  the  Mahayana.  All  is  here  conceived 
in  materialistic  terms.  The  mind  bent  on  Bodhi,  saving  wis- 
dom, falls  into  the  embrace  of  the  (female)  Niratma  Devi 
at  the  top  of  the  formless  (Arupa)  heaven.  This  symbolic 
process  was  interpreted  rather  too  literally  by  the  lower 
classes  and  represents  the  third  stage  in  intellectual  descent 
( from  Mahayana  to  the  Dharanis,  from  these  to  the  use  of 
Mantras,  and  from  these  to  the  Vajra-yana).  But  a  still 
lower  form  of  Buddhistic  religion  was  that  called  the  Ve- 
hicle of  the  Wheel  of  Time,  Kala-cakra-yana,  which  fol- 
lowed the  Vajra-yana  (though  Nepalese  Buddhism  still  re- 
mains mostly  Vajra-yana).  The  Kala-cakra  is  the  wheel  of 
destructive  Time,  and  this  Vehicle  is  in  sum  nothing  but 
demon-worship  as  a  means  of  protection  against  destruc- 
tion. Buddha  here  becomes  a  mere  demon.  Another  form 
of  Buddhism  (c.  900-1000  A.  D.)  in  this  decadent  stage  is 
that  mixed  with  Brahmanism,  the  Nathamarga,  a  sort  of 
Yoga-practice  devoted  to  indrawing  of  breath  and  other 
spiritual  exercises,  directed,  however,  to  winning  success 
in  this  world  rather  than  any  spiritual  gain.  There  was 
also  at  this  time  a  carnal  road  to  salvation  practised  by  the 
lower  classes  of  Buddhist  and  Brahmans  called  Sahaji- 
yas,  sages  still  worshipped,  and  sacrificed  to,  in  Thibet. 
Later  Tantric  worship,  mainly  of  the  Shakti  or  female  ele- 
ment, was  not  recognized  before  the  sixteenth  century.  It 
was  designed  chiefly  for  women  and  slaves,  for  the  deities 
are  said  to  "  prefer  low  castes."  This  debauched  religious 
type,  introduced  in  the  twelfth  century,  but  gradually 
adopted  by  the  upper  classes,  is  supposed  by  some  scholars 
to  derive  from  Scythian  sources;  but  it  is  quite  explicable 
on  India's  own  polluted  soil,  where  any  form  of  erotic 
mysticism  has  thriven  for  a  thousand  years.  Modern  Tan- 


BUDDHISM  IN  INDIA  203 

trism  pretends  to  be  literary  and  conceals  its  indecency 
under  a  thin  garb  of  philosophy,  palpably  recent  but  pre- 
tending to  be  ancient.  What  is  ancient  is  the  cult  of  ero- 
ticism and  inebriety ;  what  is  recent  is  the  philosophic  frame- 
work, the  exaltation  of  the  female  principle. 

In  Tibet,1  where  Buddhism  was  at  home  in  the  seventh 
century,  although  there  was  a  form  of  Buddhism  which 
was  practically  theistic,  the  worship  of  the  "  Original 
Buddha,"  yet  on  the  whole  the  church  was  pervaded  with 
gross  superstition.  Demonology  rather  than  theology  was 
the  care  even  of  "the  higher  minds.  This  branch,  possibly 
influenced  by  Nestorianism,  had  a  ritual  like  that  of  the 
Christian  church,  a  pope  (Lama),  bishops,  clergy  who 
officiated  in  cathedrals  adorned  with  images  and  pictures,  at 
services  where  incense  and  the  tinkling  bell  reminded  the 
first  Christian  missionaries  of  home  —  much  to  their  horror, 
for  they  thought  that  the  Devil  had  taught  the  Tibetans  a 
mockery  of  Catholicism.  These  Lamaists  are  divided  into 
two  sects,  distinguished  by  colours,  red  and  yellow. 

Although,  like  all  vigorous  religious  organizations,  Bud- 
dhism split  into  (seventeen)  heresies  and  (sixty-two) 
sects,2  even  the  great  distinction  between  Little  and  Great 
Yanas  has  not  broken  it.  In  fact  some  of  the  literature, 
like  the  famous  Questions  of  Milinda,  a  theological  tract  of 
the  second  century  A.  D.,  has  remained  common  to  both 
sections,  and  of  course  both  are  built  upon  a  great  body 
of  common  beliefs.  In  India  Buddhism  has  disappeared, 
except  as  it  is  resuscitated  today  by  missionaries,  but  we 
shall  trace  its  growth  and  still  living  faith  in  the  religions 
of  China  and  Japan. 

1  The   original   Tibet   religion   was   the    Bon,    which    recognized 
spirits  in  all  natural  phenomena,  irascible  but  placated  by  stones 
piled  on  a  hill,  and  ghosts,  placated  (bribed)  to  keep  away.     But  the 
only  lasting  ghosts  were  those  of  the  earthly  aristocrats.     The  priest 
was  a  Shaman,  a  magician,  healer,  banisher  of  evil  spirits,  and  also  a 
prophet.     Much  of  this  native  religion  still  lingers  in  Lamaism. 

2  The  252  "  heresies "  of  c.  252  B.  c.  were  chiefly  differences  of 
opinion  regarding  unimportant  practices. 


204  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

H.  C.  Warren,  Buddhism  in  Translations,  Cambridge,  Mass., 

1896. 
Buddhist  Texts,  translated  in  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  x,  xi, 

xiii,  xvii,  xx,  xxi,  xxxv-vi,  xlix. 

Sayings  of  Buddha,  J.  H.  Moore,  Itivuttdka,  New  York,  1908. 
H.  Kern,  Manual  of  Indian  Buddhism,  Strassburg,  1896. 
H.  Oldenberg,  Buddha,  5th  ed.,  Stuttgart,  1906. 
T.  W.  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhist  India,  New  York,  1907;  Indian 

Buddhism,  Hibbert  Lectures,  London,  1891 ;  Dialogues  of 

the  Buddha,  2  vols.,  London,  1899-1910. 
G.  F.  Moore,  Metempsychosis,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  1914. 
A.  J.  Edmunds,  Hymns  of  the  Faith,  the  Dhamtnapada,  Chicago, 

1902;  Buddhist  and  Christian  Gospels,  Philadelphia,  1908. 
L.  de  la  Vallee  Poussin,  Buddhisme,  Paris,  1909. 

D.  T.  Suzuki,  Outlines  of  Mahay  ana  Buddhism,  London,  1907. 

E.  B.   Cowell,  The  Jatakas,  Cambridge,   1895-1913.     Six  vol- 

umes of  Birth-stories  translated. 
W.  Geiger,  The  Mahavamsa,  Ceylon  Chronicle,  London,  1912. 

This  and  the  following  volumes  are  published  by  the  Pali 

Text  Society. 

S.  Z.  Aung,  Compendium  of  Philosophy,  London,  1910. 
Mrs.    C.    A.    F.    Rhys    Davids,    Buddhist    Psychology,    1914; 

Psalms  of  the  Early  Buddhists,  2  vols.,  1908  and  1913. 

F.  L.  Woodward,  Manual  of  a  Mystic,  London,  1916. 
See  also  under  the  Religions  of  Japan. 


CHAPTER  THIRTEEN 

HINDU    SECTARIAN    RELIGIONS 

THE  effort  to  establish  triads  of  gods  is  the  counterpart  of 
the  tendency  to  make  the  one  god  three-fold.  In  an  early 
theosophical  essay  it  is  said  that  there  are  in  reality  only 
three  deities,  one  of  earth,  Fire;  one  of  the  atmosphere, 
Wind  or  Indra ;  and  one  "  whose  place  is  in  the  sky,  dyu, 
and  his  name  is  Surya "  (sun).  It  is  the  sun-god,  who 
"  measures  out  the  spaces  "  (compare  Habakkuk  iii.  6,  "  he 
stood  and  measured  the  earth"),  under  both  the  name  of 
Surya  and  that  of  Vishnu.  The  oldest  interpreters  of  the 
Veda  understood  Vishnu  to  be  the  sun-god  or  the  three- 
fold god  who  appears  as  fire,  lightning,  and  sun  in  three 
wide  strides.  His  topmost  step  is  also  that  "  abode  of 
honey  "  in  the  sky  whither  the  worshipper  hopes  to  go,  the 
highest  sphere  which  the  stride  itself  established,  and  which 
he,  the  good  "cowherd"  (compare  our  use  of  shepherd) 
ever  guards.1  A  later  mythology  combines  with  this  a  story 
of  Vishnu  as  a  dwarf  suddenly  enlarging  his  size  and  in 
three  strides  encompassing  earth ;  but  the  traditional  Hindu 
understanding  of  Vishnu  down  to  the  Bhagavad-gita  is  that 
Vishnu  is  the  kindly  sun-god  and  as  such,  rather  than  the 
war-god  or  than  Shiva,  he  was  worshipped  by  philosopher 
and  agriculturist.  The  god  of  the  lower  classes,  whom  the 
orthodox  priests  identified  with  the  lightning-god  Rudra, 
was  Shiva.  A  third  great  god  was  the  personified  Power 
Brahma,  whom,  to  distinguish  as  (masculine)  personal  from 
the  abstract  (neuter)  Power,  we  may  call  Brahman.  He 
is  identified  with  the  old  Father-god  and  was  generally 

i  Compare  the  descriptions  of  Vishnu  in  Rig  Veda  I.  22,  90,  and 
154  with  the  Nirukta,  vii.  5. 

205 


206  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

recognized  as  the  head  of  the  orthodox  Brahmanic  pan- 
theon. So  the  early  texts  of  the  Buddhists  regard  him  as 
the  greatest  god  the  Brahmans  had.  Very  much  later, 
probably  not  before  300  or  400  A.  D.,  simply  in  order  to 
unite  the  warring  factions  of  the  strictly  orthodox  Brahman- 
worshippers,  the  then  sectarian  Vishnu-worshippers,  and 
the  Shiva-worshippers,  there  was  a  formal  union  of  these 
great  gods  as  "  three  gods  in  one  "  or  strictly  "  three  forms," 
tri-murti,  as  previously  there  had  been  an  attempt  to  unite 
the  two  sectarian  gods  under  a  dual  whole,  as  Vishnu- 
Shiva,  or  Hari-Hara.  The  Smartas  or  traditionalists 
(orthodox)  have  always  looked  askance  but  with  enforced 
indulgence  at  these  sects  and  have  been  ready  to  accept 
their  followers  provided  they  did  not  break  too  completely 
with  the  received  religion,  as  the  Brahmans'  religious  text- 
books provide  offerings  for  the  various  spirits  of  the  sec- 
tarian cults. 

Though  in  the  Trimurti  the  three  gods  appear  as  Creator, 
Preserver,  and  Destroyer,  each  member  of  the  triad  had 
originally  all  these  implied  functions.  Even  Brahman,  who 
as  Creator  is  popularly  supposed  to  have  done  his  work  at 
the  beginning  and  ceased  to  be  active,  was  a  busy  god  till 
the  first  centuries  of  our  era,  protecting  and  destroying  as 
well  as  creating.  But  he  has  finally  dropped  out  of  sight 
and  in  all  India  there  are  only  two  temples  where  he  is  the 
god.  Shiva,  the  last  of  the  triad,  is  a  case  of  the  first 
shall  be  last,  for  he  is  the  first  of  the  three  to  become  an 
All-god.  In  contrast  with  kindly  Vishnu,  he  represents  the 
fearful  power  in  nature ;  he  is  god  of  robbers  and  thieves ; 
lord  of  cattle,  for  he  slays  them  with  his  lightning;  terri- 
ble, monstrous,  but  called  shiva,  kind,  euphemistically,  yet 
really  austere,  hence  the  god  of  ascetics.  He  lives  in  ceme- 
teries, is  adorned  with  skulls,  garbed  with  snakes  and  ashes ; 
or  again  he  madly  dances  on  the  mountain  "tops,  the  god 
whom  the  Greeks  took  to  be  Dionysos  because  of  the  orgias- 
tic traits  in  his  character.  Shiva  is  all  one  fears,  yet  a  per- 
sonal transcendent  god.  Shivaism  was  acceptable  to  Bud- 


HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS  207 

dhism,  for  both  were  closely  connected  with  Sankhyan 
dualism.  Shiva  always  remained  a  scholar's  god,  as  because 
of  his  dancing  he  was  the  god  of  the  dramatist,  while  his 
austerity  alone  would  be  enough  to  endear  him  to  the  phi- 
losopher, who  made  him  an  All-god. 

As  a  visible  god  Shiva  bears  a  trident  and  rosary ; x  the 
crescent  is  on  his  brow ;  he  has  three  eyes,  with  one  of  which 
he  consumed  Kama,  the  god  of  love;  and  his  wife  is  the 
Mountain-goddess,  Uma,  Parvati,  called  the  terrible,  and 
destructive  mother,  Kali,  Durga,  patroness  of  Thugs,  a 
wild-tribe  goddess,  fitly  associated  with  Shiva,  who  had  in 
fact  the  same  origin.  In  later  literature,  Shiva  has  the 
phallus,  lingam,  as  sign  of  his  productive  powers ;  his  ani- 
mals, boar  and  bull,  probably  represent  this  idea  also.  All 
the  wild-tribes  when  civilized  prefer  Shiva,  and  the  Brah- 
man priests  see  to  it  that  the  local  demons  of  these  tribes 
are  enlisted  as  forms  of  this  god,  who,  though  he  is  repre- 
sented as  having  destroyed  the  orthodox  cult,  is  still  close 
to  it,  in  preserving  austerity  and  upholding  animal  sacrifice 
(both  rejected  by  Vishnu-worshippers).  One  of  the  Shiva 
sects  called  Pashupat,  cattle-lord-worshippers,  was  said  to 
be  "  here  and  there  opposed  to  the  (orthodox)  books,"  but 
the  division  is  but  metaphysical.  The  higher  intellectual 
followers  of  Shiva  are  Shivaites  only  nominally,  taking 
Shiva  as  a  convenient  name  for  their  immanent-transcen- 
dental God.  Shivaism  struggled  against  Brahmanic  con- 
trol rather  than  against  Brahmanic  belief.  Like  Buddhism, 
it  ignored  caste  and  dared  to  say  that  caste  is  of  no  impor- 
tance, for  all  men  are  children  of  one  Father. 

Included  as  elements  of  Shivaism  are  the  worship  of  his 
son,  Skanda,  the  war-god,  and  that  of  the  elephant-god, 
"  lord  of  hosts,"  who  makes  and  removes  difficulties  (Ga- 
nesha)  ;  the  Mothers,  too,  hags  of  diseases  especially  adverse 
to  children,  represent  another  element  drawn  from  the 

l  The  rosary,  common  to  Buddhism  and  Shivaism,  was  taken  over 
by  the  Christian  Church,  whose  missionaries  brought  it  back  from 
India. 


208  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Dravidian  population.  Brutal  slaughter  often  marks  Shiva's 
cult  and  he  appears  in  an  equally  rude  female  form,  whose 
cult  implies  that  of  the  Shakti  or  female  power,  which 
is  found  also  in  other  sects  but  is  most  conspicuous  in 
Shivaism  and  was  destined  to  make  the  chief  factor  in  the 
Tantric  rites  already  mentioned.  His  devotees  were  often 
found  among  the  Yogins,  who  studied  mesmerism  and 
occult  power-winning  long  before  the  Christian  era,  and 
whose  pretended  powers  have  given  them  the  name  of 
Mahatmas.  They  aimed  at  imitating  Shiva's  austerities. 
Some,  representing  sects  of  the  middle  ages,  still  survive, 
Nail-men,  whose  nails  grow  till  they  pierce  the  palms ;  Sky- 
facers,  who  hold  their  faces  rigidly  upward  till  unable  to 
bend  them  back;  Up-arm  men,  who  hold  up  their  arms  in 
the  same  way;  Tree-men,  who  hang  upside  down  in  trees; 
Skull-men  and  Pot-men,  who  carry  these  symbols;  and 
Lingins,  who  worshipped  the  phallus  itself  as  Shiva  (twelfth 
century).  Most  of  these  wretches  nowadays  have  no  idea 
what  their  attitudes  and  symbols^  mean ;  all  are  intellectually 
degraded  or  mere  fakirs.  Some  of  the  older  sects  show 
that  Shivaism  represented  a  higher  thought.  The  Naku- 
lishas,  tenth  century  and  later,  sought  "  nearness  to  God  " 
through  moral  life  and  philosophy.  About  this  time  there 
was  in  Kashmir  a  sect  called  Recognitioners,  who  aimed  at 
"  recognizing  God  in  the  soul."  It  is  only  thus  we  can 
understand  the  statement  that  a  philosopher  like  Shankara 
was  a  Shiva-worshipper.  Even  the  basest  of  modern  sects 
had  originally  an  idea  and  a  system  behind  the  symbol, 
which  has  now  become  their  all. 

The  whole  conception  of  Shiva  reverts  to  a  wild  god  of 
native  tribes  identified  with  Rudra,  a  lightning  and  disease- 
god  of  the  Veda,  who  is  also  a  mountain-cloud  phenomenon, 
cruel  and  kindly  by  turns,  and  has  many  epithets,  or  forms 
as  names,  and  to  whom  is  made  a  bull-sacrifice.  He  is 
taken,  this  all-pervading  terror,  as  the  name  of  the  All- 
god  in  his  awful  manifestations  even  in  the  Upanishads, 
though  not  till  they  began  to  name  personally  the  "great 


HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS  209 

terror,"  mahad  bhayam,  which  the  still  earlier  Upanishad- 
ists  called  the  Brahma.  Nor  was  he  then  a  sectarian  god. 
His  phallus-cult  is  probably  that  deprecated  in  the  Rig 
Veda  as  opposed  to  Aryan  worship,  that  is,  it  belonged  to 
un-Aryan  inhabitants,  as  did  the  serpent-cult,  afterwards 
adopted  from  these  aborigines  as  part  of  the  Shiva  para- 
phernalia. He  remained  an  adapted  god  of  the  Brahmans 
(not  sectarian),  till  perhaps  about  the  fourth  century  B.C., 
when  his  worshippers  became  exclusively  Shivaites,  thus 
beginning  the  sectarian  worship  of  this  god,  whom  they 
called  Maheshvara,  Great  Lord,  etc.  By  the  sixth  century 
A.  D.  there  were  Shiva  sects  in  south  India  and  by  the  ninth 
there  were  two  schools  of  Shivaism  in  Kashmir.  Probably 
most  of  the  modern  sects  go  back  to  about  this  period, 
though  the  elements  of  Shivaism  are  much  more  ancient. 
Thus  the  worship  of  Mothers,  that  of  Ganesha,  and  of 
Skanda,  were  older  separate  cults,  gradually  amalgamated 
with  that  of  Shiva.  The  Pashupat  system  of  Shivaism 
probably  began  about  200  B.  c.  Shiva  had  no  systematized 
Descents  (Avatars).  When  he  appeared  on  earth,  he  came 
as  the  great  god,  not  in  animal  or  human  form,  though 
occasionally,  in  imitation  of  Vishnu,  his  worshippers  have 
invented  Avatars  for  him  also.  His  bull  is  regarded  as  a 
sacred  animal,  but  not  a-s  the  god  in  person. 

The  worship  of  Vishnu,  who  bears  the  (sun-)  discus, 
like  that  of  Shiva,  takes  many  forms.  First  he  was  re- 
vered as  Lord,  Ishvara,  by  philosophers  who  sought  to 
make  him  representative  of  deistic  doctrines.  Then  he  was 
revered  under  the  name  Krishna  or  Vasudeva,  a  clan-god 
raised  to  all-god-hood,  and  later  as  Rama,  another  clan- 
god  of  the  same  sort.1  After  he  was  recognized  in  a  hu- 

1  These  clan-gods  may  originally  have  been  clan-men,  later  deified 
as  heroes  and  regarded  as  local  gods ;  then  as  clan-gods  raised  to  a 
par  with  the  god  of  gods  recognized  by  a  more  advanced  com- 
munity. Heroes  in  India  become  divine,  and  divinities,  almost  as 
soon  as  they  die,  sometimes  before.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  both  Rama  and  Krishna  were  gods  interpreted  as  men. 
The  evidence  for  neither  view  is  convincing. 


210  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

man  form,  the  Brahman  priests  appear  to  have  reasoned 
thus :  "  Krishna  is  a  form  of  Vishnu ;  what  about  other 
divine  descents  to  earth  ?  The  fathers  said  that  the  Dwarf 
was  Vishnu.  They  also  said  that  a  divine  Fish  rescued 
Manu ;  they  identified  the  Fish  with  Brahman,  but  we 
identify  him  with  Vishnu."  Then  they  added  all  the  other 
condescensions  of  Vishnu  as  Descents,  Avatars.  These 
they  gleaned  from  their  mythological  learning,  such  as  the 
Avatar  of  the  Boar,  who  (originally  as  Father-God)  is  said 
to  have  raised  earth;  or  from  later  lore,  such  as  the  man- 
lion  divinity,  who  tore  an  opponent  to  pieces,  or  the  ancient 
Rama-warrior  of  the  Bhrigu  clan.  Then  on  various  occa- 
sions they  added  more,  such  as  the  spirit  called  the  Swan  or 
Goose,  the  sun-bird  Garuda,  the  Tortoise,  which  bore  earth 
on  its  back,  and  eventually  Buddha  and  even  a  future 
Avatar,  Kalkin.  The  list  held  at  ten  for  a  time,  but  the 
Puranas  added  as  many  more,  including  the  founder  of  the 
Jains  as  an  Avatar.  These  make,  as  a  group,  Vishnu's  third 
method  of  revealing  himself  to  man,  in  forms  under  which 
he  is  worshipped.  Also,  to  the  religious  person,  the  soul 
within,  being  one  with  the  One  God,  is  another  form ;  and, 
to  the  mass  of  people,  the  spirit  in  the  idol  is  another. 

Krishna,  called  Vasudeva,1  is  brother  of  Balarama  San- 
karshana,  a  bucolic  drunken  "  ploughman  "  god,  much  cele- 
brated in  epic  verse.  In  sundry  early  inscriptions  and  notices 
of  gods  this  Sankarshana  is  regularly  associated  with  Vasu- 
deva. Later,  Krishna  is  credited  with  a  son  and  grandson, 
Pradyumna  and  Aniruddha,  of  whom  the  earlier  accounts 
have  nothing  to  say,  but  whom  the  theologians  adopt  as 
metaphysical  figures.  The  only  early  partner  of  Krishna 
is  Sankarshana,  the  ploughman,  his  older  brother.2  This 
Krishna  is  the  object  of  a  cult  originally  independent  of 

1  Originally  Krishna  is  independent  even  of  Vasudeva,  who  seems 
to  have  been  another  clan-god,  belonging  to  the  Vrishni  clan,  also 
exalted  from  human  or  hero  estate  to  the  position  of  god  of  gods. 
But  Krishna  appears  as  a  Vasudeva-form  in  the  Bhagayad-gita. 

2  In  the  later  systems,  these  relatives  represent  activities  of  God. 
Thus  Caitanya  (below)  explains  Krishna  Vasudeva  as  intelligence, 


HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS  211 

Vishnu.  He  is  dramatically  represented  as  slaying  his 
wicked  uncle.  He  is,  in  fact,  a  local  hero-god  whose  cult 
expanded  till  he  was  received  into  good  society  and  identi- 
fied with  a  Vedic  sage  of  the  same  name  referred  to  in  the 
Upanishads.  After  the  Bhagavad-gita,  "  the  New  Testa- 
ment of  India"  (c.  300-400  B.C.),  he  was  also  identified 
with  the  Brahmanic  highest  spirit  called  Narayana,  a  name 
in  Manu's  law-book  of  Brahman,  who  in  turn  was  identi- 
fied with  Vishnu.  The  earliest  religious  system  of  the 
Vasudeva-Krishna  cult  is  monotheistic ;  the  god  is  "  god  of 
gods  "  and  the  object  of  special  devotion,  bhakti.  The  cult 
of  the  four  forms  or  manifestations  comes  later  and  is 
found  in  the  (Vishnu)  Pancaratra  system,  assigned  by  some 
scholars  to  the  third  century  B.  c.,  but  probably  considerably 
later.  The  Bhagavad-gita  does  not  yet  recognize  the  iden- 
tity of  Krishna  with  Vishnu  as  All-god,  only  with  Vishnu 
as  sun-god,  nor  with  the  four  forms  of  the  Pancaratra 
system.  It  recognizes  Krishna  as  the  One  God,  who  loves 
man  and  whose  grace  gives  salvation.  Knowledge  and 
works  are  not  considered  altogether  vain,  but  they  are  depre- 
cated. Faith  alone  suffices  to  save.  "  Give  up  works ;  medi- 
tate upon  me ;  then  am  I  your  saviour ;  I  save  those  who  set 
their  hearts  on  me ;  through  my  grace  are  they  saved. 
They  that  love  me,  they  are  in  me  and  I  in  them.  I  am 
the  father,  the  mother,  the  Way  (of  salvation),  the  only 
Lord  and  refuge.  Even  those  who  worship  other  gods  with 
faith  and  love  are  really  worshipping  me  alone.  He  who 
gives  to  me  even  a  flower  or  water,  from  him  I  accept  it 
as  a  gift  of  love  and  sufficient  sacrifice.  Whatsoever  thou 
doest,  offerest,  or  eatest,  do  it  as  a  sacrifice  to  me,  for  I, 
Krishna,  am  God." 

Because  Vishnu  as  the  sun-god  is  the  topmost  god,  whose 
place  is  like  an  eye  in  the  sky,  and  because  his  loftiest  place 
is  the  abode  of  bliss,  and  represents  the  highest,  purest, 

Sankarshana  as  consciousness,  Pradyumna  as  love,  and  Aniruddha 
as  sportiveness ;  older  systems  interpret  Pradyumna  as  mind  and 
Aniruddha  as  consciousness. 


212  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

divinity,  he  rises  steadily  in  esteem  from  the  Vedic  to  the 
Puranic  age,  a  favourite  with  the  mystic  philosopher  as  with 
those  who  preferred  the  gentle  cult  of  the  sun-god  to  the 
wild-abuses  of  Shiva.  In  the  later  epic,  the  identity  of 
Vasudeva-Krishna  with  Vishnu  is  fully  established,  al- 
though in  this  same  epic  there  are  several  passages  which 
show  that  there  was  still  strong  antagonism  against  the 
ascription  of  supreme  godhead  to  Vasudeva.  He  was  not 
yet  universally  recognized,  but  was  still  more  or  less  of  a 
local  god,  though  strenuously  demanding  for  himself  the 
status  of  God. 

There  was,  however,  another  Krishna  with  whom  the 
saint  of  the  Veda  had  to  divide  honours.  This  was  the 
cowherd  Krishna,1  whose  chief  reputation  was  that  of  an 
amorous  swain  of  cowherds,  delight  of  the  maidens,  whom 
he  chases  and  woos  by  the  dozen.  He  was  a  musical, 
prank-playing,  dancing  boy-god,  unknown  to  the  Bhagavad- 
gita,  but  recognized  in  later  parts  of  the  epic  as  identical 
with  Krishna- Vasudeva.  Nothing  more  incongruous  can 
be  imagined  than  this  union.  A  sort  of  Pan,  playing  his 
pipes  and  chasing  girls,  is  now  the  majestic  All-god  called 
Vasudeva-Krishna- Vishnu.  The  easiest  explanation  is  that 
two  forms  of  Krishna  have  united,  one  the  warrior  god, 
whose  glory  was  attached  to  the  clan-god  of  the  western 
Vrishnis,  and  the  other  the  local  Mathura  cowherds'  god, 
of  whom  as  a  child  one  told  marvellous  feats  and  as  a 
youth  humorous  pranks.  His  clan  is  supposed  by  Professor 
Bhandarkar  to  have  been  that  of  the  Abhiras.  The  cultus 
is  directed  to  him  as  the  lover-god  and  this  is  what  has  made 
Krishna-worship  popular  among  the  sentimental  religionists 
of  India  from  the  time  of  the  Gita  Govinda  in  the  twelfth 
century.  Identified  with  that  of  Vasudeva- Vishnu,  this  cult 
regards  him  formally  as  Supreme  Spirit ;  but  the  whole  tone 
of  such  later  sects  is  that  of  mystic  eroticism  centred  about 
Krishna  as  the  lover-god. 

V 

iThis  is  the  Gokula  Krishna,  whose  cult  probably  arose  shortly 
before  the  Christian  era  and  was  brahmanized  soon  after  that  era. 


HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS  213 

A  third  phase  of  the  cult  appears  still  later  in  the  special 
worship  of  the  infant  Krishna  with  the  Madonna,  possibly 
a  loan  from  Christianity  due  to  the  identification  of  Krishna 
and  Christ.  Krishna  is  called  Kushto  and  Krishto  in  some 
of  the  northern  dialects.1  Such  are  the  forms  of  Vishnu 
the  sun-god  as  All-god  on  earth.  At  the  same  time  there 
arose  an  independent  growth  of  sun-worshippers,  probably 
fostered  by  Persian  influence,  so  that  in  the  ninth  century 
of  our  era  there  were  no  less  than  six  sub-sects  of  Sauras 
(sun-worshippers),  as  there  were  six  devoted  to  Ganesha, 
an  indication  of  the  rapid  growth  of  devotees  of  all  kinds 
at  this  period,  who  worshipped  gods  still  distinct. 

The  essentially  monotheistic  Vishnu-religion  played  a 
very  important  part  in  combating  the  influence  of  Shankara 
(born  788  A.  D.),  who  had  established  monistic  idealism  and 
taught  that  life  was  a  dream  in  a  world  of  illusion.  Some 
time  after  Vasudeva-Krishna  had  been  identified  with 
Vishnu  the  same  process  raised  Rama,  the  western  hero  or 
godling,  to  a  similar  position.  The  identification  of  Rama 
with  Vishnu  is  perhaps  as  old  as  the  first  centuries  of  the 
Christian  era;  but  there  is  no  cult  of  him  before  the  tenth 
or  eleventh  century.  Ramanuja,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
eleventh  century,  founded  a  South  Indian  church  which, 
while  founded  upon  the  Vedanta  philosophy,  held  a  differ- 
ent interpretation  from  that  of  Shankara.  To  Ramanuja, 
the  world  and  soul  are  parts  or  attributes  of  God ;  the  world, 
in  short,  is  not  illusive  but  real.  This  is  the  true  Upanishad 
doctrine,  of  which  the  illusion-doctrine  is  a  later  phase;  it 
is  a  montheism  as  well  as  a  pantheism.  God  is  eternal,  free 
of  all  defects.  He  pervades  the  universe;  he  is  creator, 
preserver,  destroyer.  He  is,  however,  incorporate  in  va- 
rious manifestations,  the  Avatars  of  Vishnu,  but  He  may 
be  recognized  as  the  one  within  the  heart.  This  god  one 
must  worship  with  bhakti,  that  is,  yoga  or  devout  medita- 

1  Bhandarkar,  Vaishnavism,  Saivism,  etc.,  Strassburg,  1913,  p. 
38.  By  the  third  century  A.  DV  Manichaeism  and  Mithraism  and 
probably  Christian  teaching  had  already  penetrated  to  India. 


214  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

tion.1  This  church  divided  into  two  sects,  one  holding  that 
God  first  extended  His  grace  to  save,  as  a  cat  seizes  its 
kitten;  the  other,  that  man  must  first  seek  to  be  saved,  as 
a  young  monkey  must  first  embrace  its  mother's  neck  to 
be  carried  to  safety.  Hence  these  sects,  still  vigorous  in 
South  India,  are  known  as  the  Cat  and  the  Monkey  sects. 
They  are  to  the  Ramanuja  church  what  Augustinian  and 
Pelagian  doctrines  were  to  the  Roman  Church.  The  Pashu- 
pats  among  the  Shivaites  hold  to  the  cat-theology ;  but  most 
of  the  Shiva-sects  are  adherents  of  the  monkey-doctrine. 
Despite  Ramanuja's  name,  he  seems  to  have  been  a  wor- 
shipper of  Krishna  as  a  form  of  Vishnu.  His  follower 
Ramanand,  however,  favoured  Rama  (fourteenth  century). 
His  Vishnuism  was  a  monotheism,  opposed  to  eroticism ;  he 
also  preached  against  caste-distinctions.  Kabir  (died  1518), 
of  Ramanand's  sect,  and  Dadu  (circa  1600)  spread  the 
cult  of  Rama  as  name  of  God  through  northern  India,  espe- 
cially among  the  lower  classes,  to  which  they  belonged. 
Tulsidas  about  the  same  time  (he  was  born  in  1532)  fur- 
ther popularized  this  Rama-monotheism  through  the  medium 
of  poetry  in  the  vernacular.  All  these  sects  were  virtually 
monotheistic  and  ignored  the  grosser  sentimental-sensuous 
aspects  of  Vishnuism.  A  reform  of  Ramanuja's  church 
introduced  by  Madhva  (1200-1275)  in  southern  and  middle 
India  had,  however,  introduced  an  element  of  weakness 
in  stressing  the  "  love  "  element.  Madhva  taught  that  the 
individual  soul  was  different  from  Brahma  and  that  the 
grace  of  God  was  won  by  sympathetic  appreciation  of  God's 
character.  But,  to  attain  this,  one  must  yearn  for  God,  ap- 
parently a  safe  tenet,  but  not  for  Hindus.  He  who  yearns 
for  God  in  India  soon  loses  his  head  as  well  as  his  heart. 
Madhva  worshipped  both  Krishna  and  Rama  as  forms  of 
Vishnu,  the  name  of  God,  and  from  this  time  on  the  special 
Bhagavat  worship  (of  Vishnu  as  Krishna)  declined  in  fa- 
vour of  a  more  catholic  Vishnuism;  but  the  poetry  of  this 

i  Ramanuja  expressly  defines  bhakti  as  upasana  and  as  yoga.    He 
nowhere  teaches  "  love  "  in  the  usual  Krishnaite  sense. 


HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS  215 

period  shows  a  mystic  love  of  God  indistinguishable  from  the 
gross  sensuousness  which  has  been  the  bane  of  the  Krishna- 
cult  since  the  day  of  the  amorous  Cowherd.  Thus,  in  the 
twelfth  century,  Nimbarka  showed  a  strong  predilection  for 
the  united  worship  of  Krishna  and  his  mistress  Radha,  which 
led  directly  to  the  excess  of  the  Radha-cult  as  taught  in 
the  sixteenth  century  by  Vallabha  in  western  India,  vir- 
tually the  worship  of  the  lover-god  Krishna  and  of  Radha, 
the  aim  of  the  devotee  being  to  go  after  death  to  a  vulgar 
heaven  of  sensual  delights.  In  this  cult  comes  out  strongly 
the  theory,  also  an  early  Christian  idea,  that  the  spiritual 
guide  of  the  sect,  the  Guru,  represents  God.  He  is  divine 
to  the  Hindu  devotee  and  must  be  served  with  degrading 
personal  attendance ;  he  owns  the  devotee  and  the  devotee's 
property. 

Somewhat  better  was  the  contemporary  religion  of  Cai- 
tanya  of  Bengal,  who  indeed  stressed  unduly  the  amorous 
element  in  the  worship  of  Krishna,1  but  he  also  preached 
a  spiritual  devotion  and  opposed  the  caste-system.  Utterly 
opposed  to  the  growing  tendency  of  erotic  religion,  Namdev, 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  discarded  the  cult  of  Radha, 
deprecated  formalism  and  preached  purity  (love  of  a  pure 
heart  for  a  pure  God)  to  the  western  Mahrattas.  The 
Sikhs  have  incorporated  in  their  Granth  (bible)  some  of 
Namdev's  hymns.  The  Mohammedans  taught  him  to  de- 
spise idols,  which  were  used  even  by  Ramanuja.  In  the 
seventeenth  century,  Tukaram,  a  devout  slave-caste  teacher, 
followed  Namdev.  The  seeming  catholicity  as  to  caste  of 
several  of  these  religious  leaders  is  due  to  their  low  origin 
as  much  as  to  their  contact  with  Mohammedanism.  Kabir, 
the  forerunner  of  the  Sikhs,  was  a  bastard  son  of  a  Brahman 
woman  brought  up  by  a  Mohammedan.  Dadu  was  a  cot- 

1  It  has  been  observed  by  many  scholars  that,  as  a  rule,  the  Rama- 
sects  are  purer-minded  than  the  Krishna-sects.  A  Ramaite  re- 
gards the  love  of  God  as  that  of  a  father  for  his  son ;  a  Krishnaite 
as  that  of  a  lover  for  his  mistress.  But  the  early  Krishnaism  of 
the  Bhagavad-gita  was  not  of  this  debased  type;  there  God  loves, 
but  is  not  amorous. 


2l6  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ton-cleaner;  Sena,  a  follower  of  Ramanand,  was  a  barber; 
Namdev  was  a  tailor,  etc. 

In  all  these  Vishnuite  sects  there  is  a  strong  reaction 
against  the  practical  atheism  of  Vedantic  monism.  Be- 
ginning with  Ramanuja,  this  struggle  persisted  down  to  the 
sects  which  are  half-Mohammedan.  It  started,  however, 
long  before  the  formal  attack  of  Ramanuja  on  his  philo- 
sophic predecessor,  for  the  Narayana  and  Vasudeva  (Bha- 
gavat)  cults  were  essentially  monotheistic,  not  monistic. 
They  continue  that  God-idea  which  in  the  Upanishads  them- 
selves converts  the  holy  terror  of  nameless  Power  into  a 
God  of  grace.  It  is  this  tendency  which  led  in  the  mid- 
dle ages  to  the  deistic  sects  like  that  of  the  Sittars  (Blessed), 
believers  in  a  pure  life  and  one  God.  They  and  even  Rama- 
nuja have  been  suspected  of  borrowing  from  Christianity. 
But  it  is  not  necessary  to  assume  any  loan  to  explain  Hindu 
monotheism.1  All  that  the  historian  may  say  is  that  such  a 
loan  is  not  at  all  impossible. 

If  there  has  been  any  loan  from  Christianity,  it  is  to  be 
found  in  the  mediaeval  sects  worshipping  a  Lord  regarded 
as  a  God  of  love ;  yet  it  is  quite  possible  to  derive  this  idea 
also  from  native  sources.  Its  mediaeval  expression  is 
perhaps  enhanced  by,  rather  than  drawn  from,  Christian 
missionaries.  At  the  same  time,  the  close  approach  to 
Christian  expression  even  in  the  Bhagavad-gita  lends  col- 
our to  the  theory  that  some  later  re-writer  may  have  inten- 
sified the  faith-doctrine  there  advanced.  Yet,  in  connexion 
with  this,  it  must  be  remembered  that  Buddha  had  already 
become  an  object  of  loving  personal  devotion  and  perhaps  the 
influence  of  the  Buddhist  faith  and  love  of  the  master,  who 
in  the  Mahayana  system  is  also  a  saviour,  was  not  an  unim- 
portant factor  in  the  creation  of  the  Gita  as  a  counterblast 

i  The  belief  in  many  "  gods  "  does  not  impugn  Hindu  monotheism, 
since,  when  the  God-idea  occurs,  the  gods  appear  only  as  inferior 
spirits.  Christians  also  used  to  believe  in  various  spirits,  angels, 
devils,  etc.,  as  consorting  with  or  opposed  to  God.  These  are  the 
devas  and  the  demons  of  the  Hindu  monotheist. 


HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS  217 

to  the  personal  religion  of  the  then  dominant  religious 
party.1 

Vishnuism  includes  also  a  Shakti  cult  (above)  as  that  of 
divine  energy  in  Mother- form,  so  that  it  has  a  sort  of 
trinity  of  god-powers,  God  as  All-soul,  God  as  incarnate  in 
man  (Krishna  or  Rama),  and  God  as  the  energizing  pro- 
ductive power  in  the  world;  with  which  last  Sir  George 
Grierson  aptly  compares  the  substitution  by  Syrian  Chris- 
tians of  Mary  for  the  third  person  of  the  Christian  trin- 
ity.2 

The  Puranas,  to  which  reference  has  already  been  made, 
are  a  store  of  mythology  and  ritualism  emanating  from  the 
early  and  mediaeval  centuries.  Although  historically  of 
some  inferential  importance  and  mythologically  of  the  great- 
est interest,  their  religious  value  is  not  so  great  as  one 
would  expect.  It  is  confined  to  the  details  of  ritual,  which 
of  course  has  its  own  worth  but  only  when  it  embodies  an 
idea.  The  only  idea  in  all  the  Puranic  ritual  is  that  the 
god  worshipped  is  in  an  idol ;  this  idol  is  to  be  washed 
and  dressed,  put  to  sleep  and  waked  up,  prayed  to  and 

1  The  epic  in  which  the  Bhagavad-gita  is  enshrined  is  a  work  of 
centuries,  which  has  caught  up  some  extraneous  matter  from  Persia 
and   probably   some    Christian   material   is   embedded    in   it.     Even 
Professor  Garbe  but  lately  believed  that  its  most  monotheistic  sec- 
tion is  an  echo  of  Christian  belief   (Archiv  fur  Religions-wisscn- 
schaft,  xvi,  546).    The  more  the  present  writer   studies  the   sub- 
ject the  more  is  he  convinced  of  the  probability  of  early  borrowing 
on  the  part  of  India  and  the  improbability  of  any  one  ever  knowing 
how  much  borrowing  there  has  been.     India  is  a  sponge  that  soaks 
up  all  ideas  and  cults.     It  borrowed  freeljr  from  the  native  aborig- 
ines ;   it  absorbed  the  border-land  beliefs ;   it  took  to  itself   Greek 
astronomy  and  perhaps  Greek  drama ;  and  it  would  not  be  surpris- 
ing if  it  had  drawn  something  from  a  religion  brought  to  its  doors  by 
missionaries  in  the  first  centuries  of  our  era.     Its  texts  are  plastic. 
There  is  not  an  early  Brahman  or  Buddhist  epic  or  religious  poem 
(after  the  Vedic  age)  which  has  not  been  re-  and  re-written,  with 
any  number  of  cnanges,  interpolations,  and  additions.    Moreover, 
most  of  these  religious  texts  are  dateless;  we  congratulate  ourselves 
if  we  can  approximate  to  within  two  or  three  centuries  of  the  time 
when  they  were  composed.    Nevertheless,  probability  is  not  proof. 

2  Journ.  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  1907. 


2l8  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

fed,  and  glorified  as  the  very  image  of  the  divine.1  Each 
Purana  has  its  own  god;  some  are  in  honour  of  Shiva; 
some  extol  Vishnu;  a  few  celebrate  other  gods.  More- 
over the  ritual  is  not  the  same  in  all;  but  it  might  as 
well  be  so,  for  all  the  ideas  one  can  extract  from  the  texts. 
The  Puranas  in  general  are  a  sort  of  resume  of  idolatry- 
lore  based  on  a  polytheistic  sectarianism  which  reverts  to 
the  ancient  henotheism  of  India:  for  the  devotee,  only  this 
god  now  worshipped  is  of  moment.  At  the  same  time,  they 
contain  references  to  the  old  fiends,  devils,  gods,  and  tales 
garnered  from  antiquity,  which  show  that  these  are  still 
the  object  of  fear  and  wonder ;  but  even  these  are  chiefly  re- 
flections from  epic  tradition,  though  a  few  new  figures  ap- 
pear. In  general,  the  eighteen  Puranas,  from  circa  300  to 
1300  A.  D.,  may  be  dismissed  from  a  history  of  religions  with 
the  remark  that  they  are  an  early  literary  (save  the  mark) 
expression  of  what  may  be  seen  today  in  the  various  sectarian 
temples  at  Benares,  where  a  horde  of  shrieking  priests 
drum  up  a  rich  living  by  showing  the  credulous  a  god-doll. 
This  religious  phase  is  the  nearest  approach  to  shamanism 

1  Compare,  for  example,  Agni  Purana,  lyi,  f.,  on  installing  an  idol : 
"  This  image  embodies  the  Supreme  Spirit ;  its  pedestal  is  the  god- 
dess ;  the  ceremony  symbolizes  the  productive  union  of  the  two 
(as  man  and  wife).  .  .  .  Bathe  the  image  with  hot  water  in  pitchers 
of  clay  from  holy  ground  .  .  .  bathe  the  Supreme  God  with  con- 
secrated water  and  scrub  him  with  consecrated  earth ;  pour  over  him 
the  washings  of  grain ;  say  the  magic  words ;  wave  lights  and  flags 
before  him ;  read  the  texts  to  him ;  spikenard  and  myrobolan  on  his 
head;  eighty-one  pitchers  (of  water)  pour  upon  his  head  and  an- 
noint  the  god  with  sandal-paste  .  .  .  rub  his  body  till  he  glows; 
offer  him  perfumes  and  song;  give  him  flowers  and  rich  robes; 
wave  incense  before  him;  put  collyrium  upon  his  eyelids;  a  mirror 
shall  he  have  and  over  his  head  an  umbrella ;  fans  wave  before  him. 
.  .  .  The  priest  shall  say,  '  Oh  best  of  gods,  be  pleased  to  go  a  jour- 
ney.' Then  decorate  the  platform;  place  the  god  on  the  mystic 
diagram  called  svastika;  make  the  god  enter  the  image  with  the 
(designated)  spells;  anoint  the  image  with  butter;  put  a  mirror 
before  it;  worship  the  image  with  songs,  music,  flowers,  perfumes, 
chowries,  and  lamps ;  place  saffron  and  turmeric  on  its  head ;  take  it 
to  the  river,  bathe  it  along  with  priests  and  the  best  people;  take 
it  out  of  the  water,  worship  it  again,  bring  it  back  to  the  temple  .  .  . 
then  celebrate  the  nuptials  of  the  god  and  his  spouse.  .  .  ." 


HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS  219 

and  fetishism  to  be  found  in  what  is  supposed  to  be  a  civil- 
ized community.  It  has  no  real  support  in  the  Hindu's  own 
higher  religion;  for  the  pity  of  it  is  that  it  is  not  a  primi- 
tive form  but  a  degradation.  It  represents  decadence,  the 
substitution  of  sound  and  emotion  for  sense  and  sanity. 

Native  religions  that  have  been  influenced  by  Persian, 
Christian,  and  Mohammedan  beliefs  cannot  be  regarded  as 
strictly  Hindu.  Nanak,  a  follower  of  Kabir,  who  himself 
was  more  Mohammedan  than  Hindu,  was  born  in  1469  and 
created  the  famous  church  militant  of  the  "  Lions  of  the 
Punjab,"  known  as  Sikhs,  which  reflected  various  religious 
elements  and  foreshadowed  those  modern  reforms  which 
are  more  political  than  pietistic.  The  Sikh  cult  of  Sword 
and  Book  (Granth)  built  up  a  new  political  party,  but  its 
religion  was  a  farrago  of  old  ideas.  Nanak  had  been  in 
Arabia  and  borrowed  from  the  Mohammedans  his  hatred 
of  idolatry  and  his  teaching  of  monotheism,  God  being  wor- 
shipped under  the  Holy  Name.  He  retained,  however,  a 
strong  sub-stratum  of  Hindu  pantheism  and  the  Sikh  wor- 
ship of  the  Guru  (spiritual  leader)  was  as  pronounced  as  in 
the  Hindu  sects.  A  large  number  of  these,  often  sub-sects, 
inaugurated  by  some  ignorant  pretender  with  more  piety 
than  education,  has  now  for  many  years  agitated  the  popu- 
lation of  northern  India. 

The  so-called  Reforming  Sects  of  the  last  century  are 
generally  of  a  higher  type,  though  they  are  all  hybrid  re- 
ligions formed  of  a  mixture  of  native  and  foreign  beliefs. 
The  first  was  the  deistic  sect  of  Ram  Mohun  Roy  (1772- 
1833),  called  the  (Adi)  Brahma  Samaj  or  Religious  Congre- 
gation, a  conservative  Bengal  reform,  afterwards  liberal- 
ized by  Debendranath  Tagore,  till,  like  all  other  Hindu 
sects,  multiplying  by  scission,  under  the  leadership  of  Ke- 
shub  Chunder  Sen,  a  radical  enthusiast  of  great  sincerity 
but  of  intemperate  mind,  it  split  into  two  divisions,  the  new 
church  calling  itself  the  Brahma  Samaj  of  India  (1866). 
The  next  year  another  (Prarthana)  Samaj  on  the  general 
lines  of  the  Adi  (First  Congregation)  was  started  inde- 


220  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

pendently  in  western  India.  Sen's  sect  objected  to  caste 
and  child-marriage ;  it  was  from  the  beginning  more  a  social 
than  a  religious  reform ;  t}Ut  it  adopted  the  theatrical  meth- 
ods of  Caitanya  (to  which  it  was  related)  and  Sen  him- 
self offended  his  followers  by  permitting,  for  political  rea- 
sons, child-marriage  in  his  own  family.  He  came  to  be- 
lieve with  his  devotees  that  he  was  half  divine;  he  pro- 
fessed himself  a  demi-Christian,  and  died  a  demi-Buddhist 
(invoking  "  the  mother  of  Buddha  ").  Displeased  with  the 
love-feasts  and  other  paraphernalia  of  emotionalism  prac- 
tised by  this  Samaj,  the  sober  members  revolted  (1878-84) 
and  formed  the  General  Congregation  (Sadharana),  which 
teaches  the  fatherhood  of  God  and  brotherhood  of  man, 
and  insists  that  true  worship  is  to  love  God  and  do  His 
will.1  A  curious  but  important  Samaj  is  that  inaugurated 
by  Dayananda  and  known  as  the  Arya  Samaj.  It  appears 
to  have  started  under  the  influence  of  the  Bengal  Adi  Samaj 
as  a  western  branch,  beginning  its  activities  in  Bombay 
(1875)  and  Lahore  (1877),  and  was  for  a  time  in  rapport 
with  the  Theosophical  Society.  But  Dayananda  (1824- 
83 )  was  an  independent,  who  is  to  be  credited  with  the  move- 
ment originally  leading  to  the  Samaj.  The  Arya  Samaj 
labours  under  the  burden  of  upholding  the  Vedas,  not  only 
as  inspired  but  as  inculcating  monotheism.  It  believes  in 
metempsychosis  also  and  is  divided  into  two  sects  called 
the  Carnivora  and  Herbivora,  according  as  its  members  eat 
meat  and  are  liberal  or,  because  Dayananda  was  a  vege- 
tarian, eat  only  vegetables,  a  sign  that  the  leader  is  becoming 
a  divine  authority.  The  Samaj  as  a  whole,  however,  is  a 
party  quite  as  much  as  a  church,  and  with  its  slogan,  "  India 
for  the  Indians,"  bids  fair  to  become  mainly  a  political 
body.  It  is  "  patriotic "  in  denouncing  both  British  rule 
and  Christianity  and  intensely  conservative  in  upholding  the 

l  There  is  also  a  Sadharana  Dharma  or  General  Religion  (not 
connected  with  the  Samaj),  embodying  a  reactionary  movement 
against  reform.  Many  other  local  Dharmas  are  now  organized  to 
defend  the  old  faith. 


HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS  221 

barbarous  laws  of  antiquity;  but  in  its  abhorrence  of  idol- 
atry, its  demolition  of  the  spiritual  prestige  of  the  Brahman 
priests,  and  in  its  educational  work  it  deserves  all  praise. 
Another  reformer  called  Shiva  Narayana,  though  not  the 
founder  of  a  Samaj,  has  laboured  in  Calcutta  and  among 
the  Assam  tribes  as  a  missionary,  and  has  done  good  work 
in  teaching  a  purer  religion  combining  Christian  and  "  re- 
formed "  Hindu  ideas. 

For  India,  a  return  to  the  teaching  of  antiquity,  in  so  far 
as  it  discards  the  priests'  yoke,  idolatry,  and  the  sensual 
side  of  Hinduism,  is  a  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished. 
The  great  danger  in  the  sects  is  that  the  Hindu  tendency 
to  deification  is  liable  to  spend  itself  in  worship  worse  than 
that  which  the  reformer  would  extirpate.  Even  the  Mo- 
hammedans, who,  like  the  Parsees,  have  reform  movements, 
are  not  free  from  this  abuse.1  Among  the  Hindus,  the 
now  popular  Radha  Soamis,  who  prate  of  science  and 
combine  into  a  "  religion  "  a  jargon  of  chemistry  and  mys- 
ticism, are  a  moral  but  unintelligent  religious  body  founded 
by  a  music-master  who  discovered  in  1861  that  he  was  God 
incarnate.  The  Deva  Samaj  is  a  body  of  professed  atheists 
who  worship  only  their  pope,  as  incarnate  spirituality. 
From  such  sects  with  their  bizarre  teaching  no  religious 
gain  can  be  expected.  The  theopoetic  mind  of  India  deifies 
men  without  hesitation  and  if  a  man  be  unbalanced,  as 
are  many  of  the  sectarian  leaders,  the  religion  of  his  fol- 
lowers becomes  mere  blasphemy.  In  America  men  of  this 
sort  are  kept  in  insane  asylums,  where  they  can  act  God 
among  other  lunatics.  In  India  they  found  a  church  and 
become  the  heads  of  religious  organizations. 

Other  reformers  of  note  in  the  West  but  without  churches 
of  their  own  are  Ramakrishna  and  Vivekananda.  The 
former,  whose  words  influenced  Sen  and  Vivekananda  more 

1  A  Mohammedan  "  reformer,"  who,  to  his  own  satisfaction,  has 
united  Islam  and  Hinduism  with  Christianity,  speaks  of  himself  as 
very  God,  the  Holy  Ghost,  etc.,  and  suggests  that  he  should  act  as 
pope  of  the  universal  religion  which  he  has  invented. 


222  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

or  less,  was  the  type  of  an  ancient  mystic.  An  ignorant 
old  man,  but  of  immense  personal  magnetism,  his  devotion 
to  God  as  "  Mother  "  and  his  undoubted,  if  rather  hysterical, 
piety  made  him  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  figures  in  the 
religious  life  of  northern  India.  Vivekananda  was  a  poli- 
tician rather  than  a  devotee.  He  popularized  the  cult  of 
Hindus  in  America  and  brought  back  to  India  a  reputation 
made  abroad. 

The  peculiar  fact  about  most  modern  Hindu  reforms  is 
that  they  preach  as  a  new  doctrine  of  startling  significance 
what  has  been  taught  for  many  centuries,  not  only  in  other 
lands  but  in  India  itself.  We  must  remember,  however, 
that  monotheism,  love  of  God,  and  a  decent  life  are  quite 
new  to  the  ignorant  natives,  who  for  the  most  part  have 
always  been  polytheists  and  have  led  lives  contaminated 
by  the  gross  moral  abuses  of  polytheism.  For,  despite  all 
the  religious  leaders  since  the  Upanishads,  the  mass  of  the 
Hindus  have  worshipped  every  sort  of  god  except  God,  and, 
despite  unimpeachable  ethical  codes,  they  have  been  forced 
into  immorality  by  their  own  priests.  There  is  today  no 
viler  caricature  of  a  man  of  God  than  the  temple-priest  of 
India  and  the  more  the  Reform  Samajas  can  do  to  lessen 
his  influence  the  sooner  will  come  the  day  when  moral 
religion  will  take  the  place  of  superstitious  debauchery. 
It  is  the  ignorant  priests  who  uphold  the  wild  sectarian 
superstitions  of  the  Puranas,  against  which  Dayananda  made 
his  ineffectual  onslaught.  India  owes  them  nothing  but 
contempt.  Her  salvation,  like  that  of  Israel  and  of  Eu- 
rope, has  always  lain  with  those  who  could  think  and 
see,  her  poets,  philosophers,  and  inspired  prophets. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Sir  Monier-Williams,  Indian  Wisdom,  London,  1876  and  1893; 
Brahmanism  and  Hinduism,  London,  1891. 

A.  C.  Lyall,  Asiatic  Studies,  London,  1899. 

J.  C.  Oman,  Cults,  Customs,  and  Superstitions  of  India,  Lon- 
don, 1908 ;  The  Brahmans,  Theists,  and  Muslims  of  India, 
London,  1907. 


HINDU  SECTARIAN  RELIGIONS  223 

M.  Max  Miiller,  The  Sur  Systems  of  Indian  Philosophy,  New 

York,  1899. 

Paul  Deussen,  Das  System  des  Vedanta,  Leipzig,  1883-1906. 
Richard  Garble,  Die  Samkhya  Philosophic,  Leipzig,  1894;  The 

Bhagavad  Gita,  Leipzig,  1905. 
J.  H.  Woods,  The  Yoga  System  of  Patanjali,  Cambridge,  Mass., 

1913- 
R.  W.  Frazer,  Indian  Thought  Past  and  Present,  New  York, 

1915- 
Sir  R.  G.  Bhandarkar,  Vaishnavism,  Saivism,  etc.,  in  Grundriss 

der  Indo-arischen  Philologie,  1913. 
Charles  Johnston,  Bhagavad  Gita,  New  York,  1908;  translated 

also,  together  with  other  epic  texts,  in  Sacred  Books  of  the 

East,  viii. 
Sir  G.  A.  Grierson,  Bhakti-Marga,  in  Encyclopedia  of  Religion 

and  Ethics. 
E.  W.  Hopkins,  Epic  Mythology,  in  Grundriss  der  Indo-arischen 

Philologie,  1915. 

M.  A.  Macauliffe,  The  Sikh  Religion,  six  vols.,  Oxford,  1909. 
J.  N.  Farquhar,  Modern  Religious  Movements  in  India,  New 

York,  1915,  The  Crown  of  Hinduism,  London,  1915. 
Lajput  Rai,  Arya  Samaj,  London,  1915. 
See  also  under  Chapters  eleven  and  twelve. 


CHAPTER  FOURTEEN 

RELIGIONS   OF   CHINA   I 
PRE-CONFUCIAN    RELIGION 

OUR  knowledge  of  the  oldest  Chinese  culture  and  religion, 
sometimes  called  Sinism,  to  distinguish  it  from  the  mixture 
of  Sinism,  Taoism,  and  Buddhism,  which  combine  to  pro- 
duce the  later  religion,  is  drawn  entirely  from  native  works, 
the  most  important  of  which  purport  to  be  those  collected 
by  Confucius,  the  great  diadochos  of  the  sixth  century  B.  c., 
who  transmitted  the  literary  treasures  of  antiquity.  Later 
scholars  of  his  school  added  a  few  notable  books.  These 
altogether  make  the  five  Canons,  King,  and  four  Classics, 
Shu,  of  Chinese  religion  as  officially  recognized  for  the 
last  two  thousand  years.  The  first  division,  called  the  Wu- 
King,  Five  Canons,  contains  the  Yih-King,  Permutations, 
lines  of  uncertain  date,  origin,  and  meaning,  traditionally 
regarded  as  embodying  a  profound  philosophy;  the  Shu- 
King,  History,  traditional  lore  decked  out  with  apocryphal 
declamation ;  the  Shi-King,  Poetry,  a  collection  of  old  songs 
and  odes;  part  of  the  (later)  Li-Ki,  ritual  law  and  cere- 
monies; and  the  Ch'un-Ts'iu,  Spring  and  Autumn  (Annals) 
of  the  district  of  Lu  (from  722  to  494. or  481  B.  c.),  this 
being  the  only  work  composed  by  Confucius  himself.  The 
second  division,  called  the  Shu  or  Classics,  consists  of  four 
works  composed  by  disciples  and  followers  of  Confucius, 
the  Lun-Yii,  Logia  (Analecta)  of  the  master  reported  by 
later  writers ;  the  Tahioh,  Great  Learning ;  the  Chung-Yung, 
a  treatise  on  the  mean  (equilibrium  and  harmony  of  mind), 
inculcating  right  for  right's  sake;  and  the  seven  chapters 
of  Mencius  (Mang-tse),  a  follower  of  Confucius  in  the 

224 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  225 

fourth  century  B.  c.  There  is  also  a  canon,  called  Hiao- 
King,1  on  filial  piety  ascribed  to  Tse-Yu,  one  of  the  imme- 
diate disciples  of  Confucius. 

Thus  the  history  of  Chinese  religion  is  not  supported  by 
"  unchallengeable  monuments,"  like  those  of  Egypt.  The 
Shu-King  itself  was  compiled  by  scholars  whose  account 
is  a  mixture  of  tradition  and  invention  arranged  in  order 
to  produce  a  desired  impression.  A  good  deal  of  this  is 
religious  history,  which  is,  as  has  been  said  of  Chinese 
history  in  general,  "  nothing  more  than  prehistoric  lore  in- 
vented by  generations  much  later  than  the  events  them- 
selves." 2  To  the  category  of  invention  belong  not  only  the 
accounts  of  the  "  heavenly  emperors,"  when  the  Chinese 
lived  in  a  moral  and  material  paradise,  but  also  the  data  re- 
garding the  succeeding  fabulous  emperors,  including  Fu-hi, 
whose  date  is  given  as  2953-2838  or  2852-2738  B.  c.,  a 
supernatural  person,  half  human  half  serpent,  son  of  the 
Chinese  Prometheus.  It  is  said  that  he  was  born  in  the 
northwest  of  (modern)  China,  which  was  the  seat  of  the 
earliest  civilization,  and  this  is  the  one  historical  fact  of 
importance  concerning  him.  Fu-hi  is  the  first  of  a  list  of 
mythical  emperors  to  whom  are  attributed  various  advances 
in  religion  and  civilization.  He  himself  is  said  to  have  in- 
stituted marriage,  hitherto  unknown;  to  have  invented  the 
eight  original  diagrams  of  the  Yih-King;  and  to  have  been 
the  first  to  introduce  sacrifice  to  his  god.  After  him  Shen- 
Nung,  an  ox-headed  half-human  emperor,  invented  agricul- 
tural implements  and  discovered  the  medicinal  properties 
of  plants.  This  beneficent  ruler  was  followed  by  the  famous 
"  Yellow  Emperor,"  Huang-ti  (2704-2595  B.  c. ;  or,  accord- 
ing to  the  Annals  of  the  Bamboo  Books,  his  reign  began  in 
2491  B.  c.),  who  enlarged  the  empire  by  driving  away  the 

1  The  text  of  the  Tahioh  and  Chun-Yung  is  contained  in  the  Li- 
Ki,  only  part  of  which  is  reckoned  as  a  King  (Canon). 

2.Hirth,  The  Ancient  History  of  China,  New  York,  1908.  The 
Chinese  scholars  themselves  suspected  the  value  of  their  historical 
books.  One  of  them  said,  "  Better  to  have  no  historical  books  than 
to  give  entire  credence  to  them." 


226  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

northern  barbarians,  perhaps  Huns,  and  by  extending  his 
sway  to  the  south  as  well  as  to  the  east  and  west.  The  first 
temples  are  ascribed  to  him ;  he  regulated  the  calendar  and 
laid  the  foundation  of  the  sacrificial  cult,  besides  paying 
attention  to  astrology,  etc.  After  an  interval,  during  which 
"  heresy  arose  and  was  suppressed,"  two  ideal  emperors 
called  Yau  and  Shun  (2357  to  2206  B.  c.),  appeared  as  em- 
bodiments of  all  the  virtues.  Their  follower  Yii,  whose 
deeds  are  recorded  in  the  Shu-King,  was  the  first  emperor 
of  the  Hia  dynasty,  which  lasted  till  a  very  wicked  emperor 
called  Kieh  (Kie),  (1818-1766  B.  c.)  brought  it  to  a  logical 
close.  The  history  of  these  emperors  is  clearly  composed 
for  moral  effect.  As  this  Kieh's  reign  of  sin  effected  the 
loss  of  the  realm,  so,  conversely,  the  new  dynasty,  called 
Shang  or  Yin,  which  lasted  from  1766  to  1122,  because 
it  began  by  being  virtuous,  enjoyed  at  first  the  favour  of 
Heaven.  The  early  history  of  the  Shu-King  consists  largely 
in  moral  speeches  directed  to  showing  the  proper  path  for 
kings  and  ministers  and  people  to  walk  in ;  but  there  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  any  one  of  them  is  authentic,  and 
even  in  regard  to  the  times  when  these  emperors  lived,  it 
is  not  probable  that  anything  except  names  and  generations 
can  be  trusted,  till  a  period  which  happens  to  be  fixed  by 
astronomical  data.  This  means,  in  reality,  that  there  is 
no  credible  history  before  the  eighth  century  B.  c.  and  that 
till  the  sixth  century  very  little  is  to  be  relied  upon.  The 
first  real  date  in  Chinese  history  is  776  B.  c.,  which  happens 
to  coincide  with  that  of  the  first  Olympiad.1  Most  of  the 
works  indubitably  authentic,  dating  from  the  sixth  century, 
were  burned  in  a  later  age  and  what  we  have  now  are  books 
supposed  to  be  identical  with  these  but  which  suffered 

i  There  is  little  reason  to  suppose  that  the  cultural  development 
of  China  was  influenced  in  particular  by  contact  with  Babylon  in 
the  third  millennium  B.  c.,  as  has  been  urged  by  Lacouperie,  in  his 
Western  Origin  of  the  Early  Chinese  Civilization,  London,  1894. 
Professor  Hirth  says  that  "his  (Lacouperie's)  arguments  seem  to 
be  doomed  to  share  the  fate  of  De  Guiness'  attempt  [in  1758]  to 
prove  that  the  Chinese  had  grown  out  of  an  Egyptian  colony." 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  227 

restoration  as  well  as  burning.  They  were  edited  by  schol- 
ars who  filled  in  lacunae  and  freely  reconstructed  the  text 
of  the  classic  "  King"  (canons),  so  that  we  cannot  actually 
be  certain  of  the  antiquity  of  any  particular  passage  in 
them,  unless  of  course  its  data  be  supported  by  other  evi- 
dence. But  the  later  writers  even  interpret  the  text  as  we 
have  it  in  favour  of  their  own  theological  views,  however 
impossible  such  interpretation  seems  to  be.1  It  is  obvious, 
therefore,  that  texts  incapable  of  meeting  their  sanction  may 
well  have  been  suppressed  altogether  by  the  same  devout 
editors.  The  sacred  books  were  burned  by  royal  edict  in 
213  B.C.  with  the  exception  of  the  Yih-King,  which,  as  a 
book  of  divination,  was  universally  esteemed  at  that  time. 
After  the  burning  of  Confucian  books  and  the  murder  of 
those  professing  their  doctrines  2  there  was  a  considerable 
interval  in  which  such  copies  as  survived  at  all  moulded 
away,  till  under  the  Han  dynasty  (206  B.  C.-22O  A.  D.)  the 
previous  edict  was  repealed.  Then  (191  B.C.)  the  old 
books  were  restored,  partly  from  memory  and  partly  from 
such  copies  as  had  survived.  The  best  scholars  edited 
these;  but,  as  even  Professor  Legge  admits,  these  Han 
scholars  may  have  put  their  own  ideas  into  Confucius's 
mouth  and  they  may  have  made  additions  to  the  writings 
supposed  to  have  come  from  his  immediate  disciples.3 

1  Probably  antique  morality  as  depicted  is  coloured  in  the  same 
way.    For  example,  the  Shang  dynasty,  above,  showed  a   (Budd- 
histic)   "  benevolence  toward   all  animals,"   which  was  ascribed  to 
them  probably  after  Buddhism's  entry  into  China. 

2  The  auto-da-fe  was  purely  a  political  matter,  the  Ts'in  emperor 
believing  that  the  classics   injured  his  cause.     Four  hundred   and 
sixty  scholars,  who  persisted  in  disobedience  to  his  edict,  were  buried 
alive. 

3  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  Hi,  p.  xix.    Professor  S.  Wells 
Williams  says  that  even  native  scholars  question  the  validity  of  the 
ancient  histories :     "  Many  of  the  Chinese  literati  believe  that  not  a 
perfect  copy  of  the  classical  works  escaped   destruction,   and   the 
texts  were  only  recovered  by  rewriting  them  from  the  memories  of 
old  scholars.  .  .  .  Not  only  were  many  works  entirely  destroyed,  but 
a   shade   of   doubt  thereby  thrown   over  the   accuracy   of  others." 
(History  of  China,  re-edited,  New  York,  1901,  p.  27.) 


228  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

The  first  form  of  Chinese  religion  must  then  be  gathered 
from  the  earliest  works  we  possess  in  their  present  shape. 
The  religion  thus  reconstructed  appears  not  in  a  philosoph- 
ical but  in  a  popular  manifestation.  The  religious  belief 
which  formulates  the  underlying  reasoned  base  of  the  re- 
ligion is  a  later  product;  early  are  the  vulgar  beliefs  and 
the  ceremonies  established  upon  these  beliefs  before  there 
was  any  interpretation  of  the  universe.  From  preconceived 
notions  regarding  the  race  and  religion  of  the  Chinese  in 
their  original  habitat,  we  shall  do  well  to  hold  aloof  in 
interpreting  their  beliefs.  There  is  no  cogent  reason  for 
supposing  that  the  Chinese  were  not  inhabitants  of  China 
for  generations  before  we  know  anything  of  them. 

The  form  of  religion  revealed  in  the  earliest  monuments 
is  chiefly  animistic.  Spirits,  identified  with  or  dwelling  in 
natural  phenomena  such  as  mountains,  rivers,  and  clouds 
are  worshipped;  but  ghost-worship,  in  the  restricted  appli- 
cation to  ancestral  ghosts,  is  more  universal  and,  with  one 
exception,  seems  to  be  more  antique.  These  ghosts  ap- 
pear to  control  the  spirits  of  natural  phenomena,  and  are 
the  main  spiritual  powers  to  which  appeal  is  made.  But 
supreme  over  all  powers,  even  the  ancestor-ghost  of  the 
emperor,  is  the  sky-power,  sometimes  conceived  as  natural 
phenomenon,  sometimes  as  a  spirit  in  phenomenon ;  in 
whose  person  as  Supreme  Power  animism  and  naturism 
unite.  The  worship  of  this  Supreme  Power  is  in  the  earlier 
literature  indissolubly  united  on  the  one  hand  with  its  com- 
plementary worship  of  Earth  and  on  the  other  with  that  of 
other  ancestors.  Heaven  and  Earth  are  the  great  parents 
of  all;  but  the  emperor  is  especially  designated  as  Son  of 
Heaven,  originally  not  so  arrogant  a  title  as  it  seems  today, 
nor  even  as  Homer  uses  the  same  words  of  any  "  heaven- 
born  king,"  8ioycvr/s  /Jao-iAeu's,  but  one  indicating  that  Heaven 
regards  the  emperor  as  a  son.  But  the  mere  fact  that  a 
man  is  a  king,  that  is,  superior  to  common  man,  makes  him 
a  superior  man,  a  superman,  hence  filled  with  godlike  power ; 
and  being  so  he  is  divine. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I 

Professor  De  Groot,  whose  view  of  Chinese  religion  is 
based  on  southern  practices,  calls  the  religion  of  ancient 
.China  Universism,  believing  that  the  philosophy  of  Yang 
and  Yin,  that  is,  the  controlling  power  of  the  universe  as 
exhibited  by  antithetic  elementary  principles,  male  and 
female,  underlies  it  from  the  beginning  and  appears  in  all 
its  phenomena.  This  is  to  interpret  the  northern  by  its 
debased  southern  form  and  to  inject  into  primitive  thought 
more  than  it  contained.  Professor  Tiele  held  that  the  re- 
ligion was  merely  animism.  This  is  to  ignore  the  approach 
to  God-worship  found  in  the  earliest  literature.  Professor 
Legge,  Professor  Giles,  and  Professor  Hirth  regard  the 
earliest  Chinese  religion  as  almost  or  quite  monotheistic.1 
In  the  interpretation  of  this  "  primitive  monotheism,  of 
which  only  scanty  records  remain,"  2  there  is  of  course  an 
unconscious  bias  in  the  direction  of  the  belief  current  some 
years  ago  that  man's  original  religion  everywhere  was  mono- 
theism. We  find  the  same  assumption,  of  monotheism  as 
the  first  religion,  made  in  the  case  of  the  Hindus  and  of 
the  Egyptians,  and  even  of  the  Hebrews !  But  Chinese  re- 
ligion is  not  primitive.  Again,  it  is  like^that  of  other  Mon- 
golians, and,  since  we  are  acquainted  with  the  raw  religion  of 
the  savages  racially  connected  with  them,  if  we  are  to  make 
any  assumption  it  should  be  along  historical  and  ethnolog- 
ical lines,  which  would  lead  us  to  the  conclusion  that  wor- 
ship of  ancestors  is  more  likely  than  monotheism  to  have 
been  the  "  primitive  religion  "  of  the  Chinese. 

Worship  of  ancestors  implies  a  belief  in  a  life  hereafter. 
The  Chinese  did  in  fact  believe  that  their  ancestors  at 
death  lived  somewhere  and  could  come  at  call.  They  spoke 
of  the  spirit  of  the  departed  as  going  up,  and  differentiated 
between  the  ascending  spirit  and  earthly  part;  but  it  was 

"  The  ancient  Chinese  were  decided  monotheists.  .  .  .  The  wor- 
ship of  ancestors  began  to  be  gradually  cultivated  as  a  side  develop- 
ment of  this  original  monotheism."  Hirth,  op.  cit.,  pp.  78,  100. 

2  Giles,  Religion  of  Ancient  China,  London,  1905,  p.  13.  The 
same  view  is  held  by  most  of  the  older  scholars,  who  thought 
Chinese  religion  was  a  degraded  monotheism. 


230  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

only  divine  beings  like  kings  and  perhaps  their  great  min- 
isters who  were  imagined  to  live  in  the  sky ;  except  as  they 
were  thought  of  as  stars.  Of  this  belief,  however,  there 
is  no  direct  evidence  in  the  earliest  period.  There  is  only 
one  worship  for  all  people  in  that  period,  namely  that 
of  the  ancestors.  At  the  solstices  the  emperor  made  sac- 
rifice to  Heaven  and  to  Earth,  a  sacrifice  offered  on  the 
ground  with  the  simplest  utensils,  the  victim  being  a  bull- 
calf  ;  in  the  case  of  Heaven  in  the  southern  and  in  the  case 
of  Earth  in  the  northern  suburb.  The  worship  of  Heaven 
is  often  united  with  that  of  mountains  and  rivers.  Sun  and 
moon  were  worshipped  with  sacrifice  on  the  east  and  west  of 
the  city,  respectively. 

But  only  the  emperor  was  of  old  allowed  to  sacrifice  to 
Heaven  and  Earth.  Himself  the  Son  of  Heaven  and  as 
worthy  of  worship  as  Heaven  itself  (being  revered  while 
alive  with  the  three  prostrations  and  nine  khowtows  with 
which  Heaven  is  revered),  the  emperor,  who  is  called 
"  Mate  of  Heaven,"  adores  Heaven  as  if  Heaven  were 
his  own  ancestor.  The  real  significance  of  this  feature 
of  early  Chinese  religion *  lies  in  its  betrayal  of  the  ex- 
clusiveness  of  the  worship.  To  the  common  man,  Heaven 
was  too  glorious  and  majestic  to  approach;  his  private 
gods  were  his  ancestors  and  the  lower  spirits.  Even  in 
worshipping  Heaven  at  the  present  time,  it  is  not  as  God 
but  as  a  spirit  with  whom  Earth  as  another  spirit  is  asso- 
ciated. "  The  husbandman  at  harvest  [today]  acknowl- 
edges that  it  is  his  duty  to  thank  Heaven  and  worship 
Earth  "  (instead  of  saying  that  he  worships  God.  Edkins, 
ibid.). 

Common  people,  who  were  not  permitted  to  sacrifice  to 

i  Although  forbidden  to  do  so  by  Confucian  rule,  yet  private  per- 
sons at  the  present  time  do  not  hesitate  to  offer  incense  and  prayer 
to  Heaven  on  the  new  and  full  moons.  "The  Chinese  say  that 
Heaven  should  be  worshipped  only  by  the  emperor.  .  .  .  This  is 
the  theory,  but  it  is  not  strictly  carried  into  practice.  Some  profess 
to  worship  Heaven  once  a  year,  others  twice  a  month."  Edkins, 
Religion  in  China,  London,  1878,  p.  92. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  231 

Earth  or  Heaven,  sacrificed  to  the  door,  ground,  and  field, 
while  the  officers  intermediate  between  emperor  and  people, 
offered  prayers  for  the  people  to  the  hills,  streams,  and 
springs.1  This  ceremony  took  place  at  the  beginning  of 
summer.  It  was  followed  by  the  great  summer  sacrifice 
for  rain,  which  was  offered  to  the  five  elemental  gods,  in- 
terpreted by  some  as  "  to  God,"  with  music,  for  "  music 
stimulates  virtue  " ;  and  finally,  in  this  ceremony,  sacrifice 
was  offered  to  the  ghosts  of  deceased  princes,  high  ministers, 
officers,  and  those  who  had  benefited  the  people,  the  worship- 
pers "  praying  that  there  may  be  a  good  harvest."  When 
the  crop  was  to  be  planted,  the  emperor  in  state  guided 
the  plough  for  the  first  furrows;  when  the  harvest  was 
ripe,  the  emperor  tasted  of  the  first  fruits.  Minute  regu- 
lations indicate  a  later  Taoist  development  codified  during 
the  Han  dynasty  (circa  200  B.  c.  to  200  A.  D.). 

The  ordinary  worship,  addressed  rather  to  spirits  of  the 
ancestors  and  spirits  of  the  earth  than  to  Shang  Ti  (Su- 
preme Ruler,  as  God)  or  to  Heaven,  is  reflected  in  the 
earliest  religious  songs.  Out  of  thousands  of  religious 
songs  current  in  his  day  Confucius  made  a  compilation  of 
some  three  hundred,  composed  in  rhymed  strophes,  the 
Shi-King.  In  how  far  these  songs  or  odes  as  they  stand 
today  are  really  the  songs  of  the  times  to  which  they  are 
ascribed,  we  cannot  say.  But,  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
songs  are  less  apt  to  be  tampered  with  than  philosophy  or 
history.  Certain  Shang  songs  of  the  second  dynasty  (1766- 
ii 22  B.C.),  only  five  in  all,  seem  really  to  belong  to  the 
twelfth  century  and  they  are  regarded  by  Sinologues  as  the 
oldest  in  the  collection.  Most  of  the  others  we  must  be 
content  to  refer  to  a  period  indefinitely  older  than  the  time 
of  Confucius,  perhaps  dating  from  the  eighth  century  on- 
ward. 

In  these  five  Shang  songs  the  oldest  expression  of  reli- 
gion is  to  invoke  the  spirit  of  the  ancestor  and  to  "  delight  " 

1  Or  to  spirits  of  these  places.     See  the  note  on  p.  234. 


232  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

him,  as  it  is  said  in  the  first  song  by  music,  not  by  liba- 
tions, as  is  the  later  practice.1  This  song  begs  the  an- 
cestral spirit  to  regard  kindly  the  seasonal  sacrifice,  made 
in  his  honour  by  the  descendant,  who  prepares  himself  for 
the  ceremony  by  fasting  and  thus  seeks  to  "  realize  the 
ancestor,"  thought  of  as  being  at  the  time  in  his  shrine. 
This  "  meritorious  ancestor  "  repeatedly  sends  down  bless- 
ings, as  is  said  in  the  second  song,  where  the  ghost  is  lured 
to  his  descendant  by  means  of  an  offering  of  soup  and  other 
viands,  in  order  that  he  may  confer  longevity  and  send 
down  prosperity  from  Heaven.  The  fifth  of  these  songs 
speaks  of  pines  and  cypresses  being  cut  down  to  make  a 
temple  for  the  ancestors,2  who  is  here  the  former  king  and 
still  watches  over  his  people  and  preserves  them.  Thus 
three  of  the  five  songs  of  this  oldest  collection  have  to  do 
only  with  ghost-  or  ancestor-worship.  The  third  song,  pos- 
sibly of  the  thirteenth  century  B.  c.,  alludes  to  the  miracu- 
lous birth  of  an  ancestor  by  means  of  a  swallow  sent  down 
by  Heaven,  and  the  fourth  also  speaks  of  Heaven  or  "  God  " 
as  founding  the  line,  so  that  a  Supreme  Spirit  is  here  recog- 
nized as  directing  the  event  which  led  to  the  ancestor's  high 
position,  the  reason  given  being  that  this  ancestor  revered 
God  and  hence  by  God's  favour  he  was  appointed  to  be  the 
model  of  the  "  nine  regions  "  or  provinces  of  the  kingdom, 
and  Heaven  treated  him  as  a  son. 

Heaven  is  expressly  called  "  yon  blue  sky  "  and  even  the 
sex  of  Heaven  is  not  fixed.  An  ode  ascribed  to  the  ninth 
century  has  the  expression  "  O  mother  Heaven,  why  dost 
Thou  not  understand  ?  " 

The  songs  of  lamentation  reflect  only  that  aspect  of  de- 

1  Later,  the  drums,  the  sounding-stone,  and  song  made  the  music. 
Intoxicants  (known  as  early  as  the  twenty-third  century,  according 
to  Professor  Legge)  were  used  only  at  great  sacrifices,  to  entertain 
guests,  and  for  family  feasts. 

2  Only  the  ancestor  has  a  temple;   other  spirits  have  altars   or 
tablets.     Great  simplicity  marks  the  early  rite.     It  is  said  in  the 
Shu-King  that  "  ofificiousness  in  sacrificing  is  irreverent  and  multi- 
plying ceremonies  leads  to  disorder." 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  233 

spair  which  may  appear  in  any  religion.  If  one  poet  says 
that  Heaven  is  unjust,  it  is  only  right  to  remember  that  an- 
other says,  "  There  is  the  great  Supreme  Lord,  does  he 
hate  any  one  ? "  There  is,  in  truth,  a  vigorous  protest 
against  the  pessimistic  view.  The  ordinances  of  Heaven 
may  be  inexplicable  to  men,  but  "  the  calamities  of  the  vul- 
gar do  not  come  from  Heaven."  Officers  may  not  (do  not) 
stand  in  awe  of  Heaven  and  the  innocent  may  suffer  with 
the  guilty;  great  and  wide  Heaven  may  have  sent  down 
death  and  famine;  compassionate  Heaven  may  be  arrayed 
in  terrors;  and  yet  it  is  not  God  that  causes  the  evil,  but 
the  evil  ways  of  men  produce  evil,  and  hence  it  is  that 
"  Heaven  arrayed  in  terrors  sends  down  its  net  of  crime." 
The  song  asserting  that  calamities  do  not  come  from 
Heaven  may  be  dated  with  tolerable  certainty  as  composed 
in  776  B.  c.  The  irregularity  of  Heaven,  or,  as  sometimes 
expressed,  the  fact  that  Heaven  has  "  reversed,"  is  not 
Heaven's  fault.  Heaven  also  is  bound  in  the  complex  of 
the  good  and  evil.  Departure  from  the  Way  (of  rectitude) 
compels  Heaven's  anger;  it  is  not  a  matter  of  kindness  or 
compassion,  as  men  think,  but  of  inexorable  law.  This  is 
finely  expressed  in  the  Tang  Ode : 

How  vast  is  God,  the  ruler  of  men  below ; 

How  arrayed  in  terrors  is  God ; 

With  many  things  irregular  in  his  ordinations 

Heaven  gave  birth  to  the  multitudes  of  the  people; 

But  the  nature  it  confers  is  not  immutable. 

Born  good  (by  nature)  are  all;  but  few  remain  good. 

It  is  not  Heaven  that  makes  you  drunk, 

So  that  you  follow  evil  devices. 

It  is  not  God  that  has  caused  the  evil  times ; 

Evil  times  arise  when  one  abandons  the  good  old  ways. 

The  explanation  of  the  enigma  is  that  people  are  normally 
virtuous.  Their  "  faculties  are  attuned  to  the  law  of 
Heaven."  Hence  there  is  no  use  in  crying  with  the  poets, 
"I  look  up  to  great  Heaven,  when  shall  I  find  repose?" 
or  "  I  look  up  to  great  Heaven,  but  it  shows  no  kindness  " 


234  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

(two  songs  begin  thus),  for  "those  whom  Heaven  does  not 
approve  sink  in  ruin  "  by  a  natural  law  applicable  to  the 
king,  as  Son  of  Heaven,  and  to  his  people.  So  it  is  said: 
"  Great  Heaven  makes  no  mistake ;  if  the  king  deteriorates 
he  will  bring  his  people  to  great  distress."  The  natural 
law  is  somewhat  quaintly  expressed  by  the  words  of  an- 
other song:  "The  doings  of  high  Heaven  have  neither 
sound  nor  smell,"  that  is,  the  power  operates  silently. 

If  we  may  take  the  Shi-King  as  the  earliest  religious  ex- 
pression of  China,  as  it  assuredly  is  except  for  the  mystic 
lines  of  the  Yih-King,  we  may  sum  up  that  expression 
with  the  remark  that  it  teaches  the  cult  of  Heaven  and  of 
other  spirits,  especially  of  ancestors,1  which  seems  to  be  the 
earlier  phase,  with  a  growing  sense  of  the  personality  of 
Heaven  as  God,  and  a  vague  belief  that  the  ghosts  or  spirits 
of  men  live  somewhere  hereafter,  though  the  exact  place 
is  vaguely  conceived.  A  lady  bereaved  of  her  husband  says, 
"  After  death  I  shall  go  to  his  abode,"  apparently  meaning 
no  more  than  is  expressed  in  the  lover's  lament,  "  Living 
we  may  be  separated,  but  when  dead  we  shall  share  one 
grave."  Yet  the  ancestors  do  not  remain  in  the  grave; 
they  are  tutelary  spirits  watching  over  their  families;  they 
receive  food  and  are  honoured  with  music  and  the  dance. 
Thus  one  song  says :  "  People  dance  with  the  flute,  to  the 
notes  of  organ  and  drum;  all  the  instruments  make  har- 
mony; all  this  is  done  to  please  the  ancestors."  So  the 
ancestors  known  as  Fathers  of  War  and  of  Husbandry  are 
to  the  Chinese  the  most  personal  gods  they  have.  This 
crops  out  repeatedly,  as  in  the  following  bucolic  ode,  at- 

i  The  cult  of  the  spirit  of  the  path  (when  one  journeys)  and  of 
hills  and  rivers  is  recognized,  but  it  is  not  certain  whether  the 
earlier  conception  is  that  the  mountain  is  itself  divine  or  has  a  spirit. 
Some  passages  favour  the  former  view,  but  others  clearly  recognize 
the  animistic  divinity  of  phenomena.  One  of  the  Shi  odes  says  of 
the  model  King  Wu  that  after  a  victory  "he  sacrificed  to  Heaven, 
hills,  and  rivers."  A  virtuous  king  "gives  rest  to  the  hundred 
spirits,  even  to  Ho  and  to  the  highest  hills."  This  naturism  is  sys- 
tematically neglected  in  accounts  of  Chinese  religion,  which  as- 
sume that  "  hills  "  are  always  "  spirits  of  hills." 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  235 

tributed  to  some  one,  perhaps  an  officer  of  state,  who  joins 
with  his  men  in  the  activities  of  the  farmer :  "  With  lutes 
and  drums  will  we  invoke  the  Father  of  Husbandry  and 
pray  (him)  for  sweet  rain  to  increase  the  produce  of  our 
millet  fields  and  bless  my  men  and  their  wives.  .  .  .  We 
remove  the  insects  that  eat  the  roots  and  joints  of  the  grain, 
so  that  they  shall  not  injure  the  young  plants.  May  the 
spirit,  the  Father  of  Husbandry,1  lay  hold  of  these  (pests) 
and  put  them  in  the  blazing  fire.  May  rain  come,  first  on 
the  public  lands  then  on  our  private  fields.  Yonder  shall 
be  handfuls  left  on  the  ground  and  ears  untouched,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  widow."  This  song  is  famous  for  its  tone  of 
loyalty  expressed  in  the  desire  that  the  private  land  shall 
be  blessed  with  rain  after  the  public  land.  It  is  noteworthy 
also,  though  not  unique,  for  the  closing  words,  full  of  com- 
passion for  the  needy.  The  ancestral  spirits  are  supposed 
to  partake  of  the  sacrifice  offered  to  them ;  but  in  the  sacri- 
fice to  Heaven  the  incense  of  the  food  is  enough.  Thus 
when  the  king  goes  to  the  border  to  offer  the  sacrifice  of 
the  new  year,  on  a  day  deemed  auspicious  by  the  diviners, 
the  words  of  the  appropriate  song  are :  "  We  divine  the 
right  day ;  we  then  sacrifice  a  ram  to  the  spirit  of  the  path ; 
we  offer  flesh,  roast  and  boiled,  and  thus  bring  in  the  new 
year.  We  load  the  stands  with  offerings  .  .  .  and  as  soon 
as  the  fragrance  ascends,  God  (Shang  Ti)  well-pleased 
smells  the  sweet  savour/' 

Extraordinary  occasions,  such  as  war,  famine,  even  a 
hunt,  caused  the  celebration  of  special  sacrifices.  But  as 
rich  and  poor  alike  had  only  one  sacrifice,  that  to  the  an- 
cestors, it  is  probable  that  other  features  are  more  ad- 
ventitious and  in  part  later;  as  the  cult  of  agricultural 
spirits  reflects  later  conditions  economically.  Streams  and 
hills  change  as  hordes  move;  the  constant  spirits  are  those 
of  the  ancestors  who  move  on  with  the  horde.  But  Heaven 
and  Earth  also  are  present  always  and  their  worship  be- 

i  Shen  Nung,  the  patriarchal  emperor,  whose  "  date "  is  2737- 
2705  B.C.  Hou-tsi,  whose  miraculous  birth  is  recounted  above,  is 
also  a  "  fellow  of  God,"  a  deified  "  giver  of  wheat  and  barley." 


236  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

came  more  pronounced  as  kings  claimed  to  be  sons  of 
Heaven,  whose  worship  was  united  with  that  of  Earth  as 
parents  of  all.  But  even  Heaven-worship  was  felt  to  be  a 
sort  of  ancestor  worship  reserved  for  Heaven's  special  son, 
the  emperor. 

The  general  distinction  between  T'ien  (Thien),  Heaven, 
"bright  and  high,"  and  Ti,  Ruler,  or  Shang  Ti,  Supreme 
Lord  (God)  is  this.  T'ien  remains  more  materialistic;  the 
blue  sky,  "  vast  and  distant,"  although  it  is  "  our  parent," 
inclines  to  the  idea  of  an  abstract  power  like  Fate.1  But 
Shang  Ti  is  more  a  personal  anthropomorphized  spirit  in 
heaven,  who  may  walk  on  earth.  Yet  circa  600  B.  c.,  in  the 
Shu  King,  there  is  usually  no  difference  between  Heaven 
and  God  (Shang  Ti).  The  titles  interchange  in  the  same 
passage ;  it  is  only  that  the  general  trend  of  expression 
tends  to  make  "  bright  and  glorious  "  Shang  Ti  more  per- 
sonal and  "  bright  and  high  "  T'ien  more  an  indefinite  Sky- 
power.  But  often  there  is  not  even  this  distinction.  Both 
are  called  "  Supreme."  Shang  Ti  is  the  heavenly  spirit ; 
Heaven  is  the  blue  sky  conceived  as  intelligent  and  moral 
orderer  of  the  universe.  The  idea  of  God,  far  from  begin- 
ning with  an  abstraction,  grows  out  of  the  conception  of 
the  blue  bright  wide  sky  as  a  power  superior  to  the  power 
of  the  high  hill,  etc.  In  this  the  Chinese  thought  as  did  the 
Aryans,  who  regarded  the  "  bright  sky  "  as  "  Sky-Father  " 
and  as  the  Father  in  Heaven.2  In  the  Shu  King  it  is  said : 
"  Heaven  gives  birth  to  the  people,  and  to  the  rulers  to 

1  Yet  man's  fate  is  not  in  the  hands  of  Heaven.     Men  shorten 
their  own  lives.    "  Heaven  considers   only  their  virtue  and  gives 
them    length    of    years    accordingly."    "Heaven    is    intelligent   and 
impartial."     It  cares  only  for  order   (virtue).    Long  life  is  always 
desired :     "  Five   are   the   sources   of   happiness,    long   life,   wealth, 
mens  sana  in  corpore  sano,  love  of  virtue,  and  fulfilling  the  (divine) 
will."     (Shu  King.) 

2  With   Shang  Ti  in   sacrifice  are  associated  the   Six  Honoured 
Ones,  perhaps  grouped  together  as  The  Seven  Directors.    The  em- 
peror "  sacrifices  to  Shang  Ti,  the  Six  Honoured  Ones,  hills,  rivers, 
and  the  herd  of  spirits"  (in  2283,3.0.!).    Altars  are  raised  on  hills 
to   the  hills,  but  the   ancestral   service   is   held   in    a   temple   with 
seven  shrines  (Shang  and  Chou  dynasties). 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  237 

regulate  the  people;  Heaven  gifted  our  king  with  valour; 
(the  other  king)  falsely  alleged  the  sanction  of  Supreme 
Heaven,  but  God  disapproved  of  him  "  (iv.  2). 

The  "  will  of  Heaven  "  is  ascertained  by  dreams  and  divi- 
nation.1 The  common  form  of  divination  was  by  the  tor- 
toise-shell, the  arched  back  probably  representing  the  vault 
of  heaven.  This  was  heated  till  it  cracked,  the  lines  rep- 
resenting an  answer.  The  lines  of  the  Yih  King  probably 
were  used  in  divination.  Other  indications  were  given  by 
the  stalks  of  a  plant,  the  millefoil  or  yarrow.  God  sends 
a  dream  to  indicate  whom  a  king  should  choose  as  his  min- 
ister (Shu  King).  In  political  changes,  however,  the  voice 
of  the  people  is  the  voice  of  God.  "  Heaven  loves  the  peo- 
ple "  (not  the  king)  ;  "  Heaven  will  effect  what  the  people 
desire  " ;  "  to  the  king  the  people  is  God."  Maintenance  of 
the  Right  Order  by  means  of  a  man  who  revolts  against 
tyranny  is  always  regarded  as  part  of  the  divine  plan,  with 
which  all  spirits  and  good  men  will  agree.  Heaven  de- 
clares itself  by  its  orderly  processes  and  righteousness  with 
which,  to  succeed,  man  must  be  in  accord.2  Though  oracles 
are  not  known,  there  is  a  suggestion  of  hidden  "  responses  " 
which  seem  to  act  as  oracles.  The  relation  between  man 
and  Heaven  is  so  close  that  spiritual  intelligences,  it  is 

1  When  fortunate,  divination  should  not  be  repeated,  but  often  dif- 
ferent kinds  are  tried  at  the  same  time. 

2  In  1119  (?)  B.C.  the  king  fell  ill  and  his  brother,  the  Duke  Tau, 
reared  three  altars  to  his  three  immediate  ancestors  and  addressed 
them :     "  If  you  three  have  charge  in  heaven  of  him  who  is  son  of 
Heaven,  let  me  be  substitute  (die  for  him),  who  am  better  able  than 
he  to  serve  spiritual  beings."     He  then  divined  with  three  tortoise- 
shells   (one  for  each  king)   and  "  looked  at  the  responses,"  which 
were  kept  locked  up.    All  were  favourable.     "  He  will  live,"  said  the 
Duke,  and  the  next  day  the  king  got  well.     Noticeable  is  here  the 
fact  that  the  appeal  is  not  made  to  Heaven,  but  to  the  ancestors 
who  "  in  Heaven  have  charge  of  Heaven's  son."    The  date  is  un- 
certain, but  the  tale  is   old   as  it  is   famous.     What  the  oracular 
responses  were,   is  not   indicated.     Tablets   of   the   ancestors  were 
carried  into  battle,  and  soldiers  who  were  brave  were  rewarded  on 
the  spot  "before  the  ancestors"  of  the  king;  if  recreant,  they  were 
slain   "  before  the  spirits   of  the  land " ;   their  children  also  were 
slain  (Shu  King;  pretended  date,  "2188"  B.C.). 


238  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

said,  are  influenced  by  perfect  government  and  put  to 
rest.  The  ethical  import  is  clearly  stated  in  the  Shu  King: 
"  God x  confers  a  moral  sense  even  on  inferior  people/' 
and  in  its  advice  to  kings :  "  Do  not  oppress ;  be  gentle 
but  strict;  promote  harmony  by  forbearance  (the  later  doc- 
trine of  compliance).  People  are  born  good;  they  are  made 
bad  only  by  (their  environment,  by)  things  (external), 
which  cause  them  to  follow  their  own  desires."  This  radical 
teaching  is,  however,  not  always  maintained.  Thus  in  the 
Shu  (Yii)  it  is  also  said  "  The  mind  of  man  is  prone  to  err; 
its  affinity  to  what  is  right  is  small."  Other  Tao  doctrine 
in  the  Shu  is  shown  by  the  insistence  on  the  doctrine  of  the 
mean,  by  its  statement  that  pride  brings  low  and  humility 
exalts,  for  this  is  the  Way  of  Heaven.  Sin  evidenced  by 
disaster  to  the  people  is  regarded  as  due  to  the  king,  who 
"  takes  to  himself  all  guilt  and  evil." 

The  Li  Ki  is  later  than  the  other  King  and  in  its  present 
form  cannot  be  older  than  the  Han  dynasty.  What  re- 
mains in  it  of  older  value  is  not  its  incredible  minuteness 
of  ritualistic  observance,  though  this  is  important  as  an 
index  of  the  spirit  of  Confucianism,  but  the  accidental 
glimpses  it  affords  into  conditions  not  recommended  but  in- 
cidentally mentioned,  sometimes  with  disapproval.  The 
State,  when  elaborate  ceremonial  was  the  chief  religious 
motif,  is  one  still  harbouring  barbarous  practices,  though 
civilized  by  comparison  with  its  neighbours.  China  was 
a  small  land  surrounded  by  savages  who,  though  living  in 
caves  and  tatooing  themselves  and  eating  raw  meat,  yet 
made  a  constituent  part  of  the  empire  as  compared  with  the 
"  demon  nations  "  of  the  North  (compare  Avestan  danhu). 
Foreign  customs  and  manners  were  introduced  into  China 
itself  soon  after  Confucius's  day  and  it  helps  to  explain 
his  insistence  on  the  good  old  customs  of  the  ancestors 

i  Here  one  with  "  Yon  Great  Heaven,"  preceding,  and  the  "  Way 
of  Heaven,"  following  (iv.  2).  In  the  Shu  also  it  is  said  that 
"  Heaven  arranges  all  social  relations.  Heaven  hears  as  the  people 
hear,  sees  as  the  people  see,  and  approves  as  the  people  approve." 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  239 

to  recognize  that  similar  innovations  were  made  even  in  his 
lifetime.  But  China  itself,  the  Middle  Kingdom,  was  not 
without  its  inherited  savagery  marked  by  the  regular  muti- 
lation of  prisoners  of  war  as  well  as  the  usual  mutilations 
practised  on  prisoners  for  crime.1  From  a  religious  point 
of  view  it  is  interesting  to  see  that  the  custom  of  burying 
the  dead  with  the  living  was  not  uncommon.  At  a  later 
date  human  sacrifices  are  not  unknown,  one  even  of  a  royal 
heir  of  a  conquered  province.  In  621  B.  c.,  three  brothers 
of  Duke  Mu  and  others  of  his  family  and  retainers  to  the 
number  of  one  hundred  and  seventy-seven  were  buried  with 
him.  This  custom  of  immolating  human  beings  to  accom- 
pany the  dead  into  the  next  world  can  be  traced  back  but 
little  earlier  than  this.  It  arose  with  the  growing  belief 
in  the  more  human  attributes  of  the  dead,  their  needs  and 
desires  hereafter  as  projected  from  earthly  conditions,  and, 
since  earlier  ideas  on  this  subject  were  very  vague,  it  may 
be  questioned  whether  this  particular  barbarity  was  not 
introduced  from  the  outside  world,  perhaps  from  the  Tar- 
tars.2 For  it  is  quite  a  different  matter  whether  one  tempts 
royal  ancestral  ghosts  with  music  to  one's  altar  or  provides 
for  their  future  pleasure  a  family  of  retainers  and  all  the 
pomp  and  circumstance  of  home.3 

Yet  even  in  the  Middle  Kingdom  a  witch  or  "  some  dis- 
eased person"  (a  cheap  bargain!)  was  exposed  to  die  in 
the  sun  when  rain  failed  to  come  in  due  season,  in  order 
that  "  pitiless  Heaven  "  might  pity  and  comfort  with  rain 
the  sufferer,  and  incidentally  benefit  other  people.  This 

1  The  Li  Ki  reveals  that  workmen  employed  to  cut  down  trees 
for  coffins  were  beheaded  if  they  erred  in  their  work.     Drunkenness 
is  condemned  in  the  Shu  King :     "  Put  to  death  those  who  assemble 
and  drink  together."     Another  approved  rule  is  that  the  emperor 
should  put  to  death  even  those  who  commit  small  crimes   inten- 
tionally, but  not  those  who  commit  even  great  crimes  unintentionally. 

2  The  Great  Wall  was  built  against  the  Huns  in  214  B.  c.,  but  as 
early  as  481  B.  c.  Confucius  speaks  of  the  "  white  foreigners." 

3  In  the  Shu  King  an  emperor  sacrifices  to  the  spirit  of  his  just 
deceased    father  by    thrice    pouring   liquor   on    the   ground,    which 
offering  is  repeated  by  his  minister,  after  washing  his  hands. 


240  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

is  one  of  the  practices  "  not  approved,"  even  argued  against 
with  scornful  irony;  but  clearly  it  was  a  practice  derived 
from  antiquity.  It  differs  from  "  sympathetic  magic "  by 
introducing  the  sympathy  of  Heaven  as  a  religious  element, 
as  it  differs  from  the  punishment  of  a  Hermes  or  saint, 
whose  will  has  power. 

The  Li  Ki  records  incidentally  many  simple  superstitions, 
such  as  that  hawks  become  doves  and  grass  becomes  fire- 
flies at  certain  seasons,  which  illustrate  the  faith  in  trans- 
formation and  perhaps  show  that  to  the  Chinese  there  was 
no  very  definite  line  between  animate  and  inanimate  mat- 
ter. Hills  (per  se)  receive  sacrifice  that  they  may  guard 
their  local  district,  as  Sky  (Heaven)  guards  the  Kingdom. 

The  name,  as  person,  produces  in  China  (as  the  Li  Ki 
shows)  strict  taboo  of  the  name  of  the  dead.  Immediately 
after  a  man  dies,  his  son  goes  to  the  roof  and  calls  his 
father  by  name,  "  Come  back,  So  and  So  " ; *  but  this  is  a 
final  effort  of  affection  to  bring  back  the  soul  before  it  has 
quite  fled.  After  this,  when  the  dead  is  recognized  as 
really  gone,  the  name  must  not  be  mentioned.  So  when  one 
enters  a  house,  one  must  at  once  inquire  what  names  are 
taboo  in  the  family,  a  very  necessary  precaution,  as  proper 
names  may  also  be  those  of  common  things ;  for  which  rea- 
son it  is  the  rule  that  one  should  not  give  a  son  a  (common 
noun)  name  of  any  hill,  river,  day,  month,  state,  or  disease. 
The  last  item  shows  that  children  were  occasionally  given 
mean  names,  as  they  are  today  in  South  India,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  warding  off  the  evil  (envious)  eye  or  an  evil  spirit. 

Wailing  for  the  dead  is  incidentally  said  to  be  "  from 
love  or  from  fear,"  a  conservative  statement.  The  mourn- 
ers for  the  dead  not  only  wail  and  put  on  special  garments, 
but  they  leap,  and  leaping  is  said  to  be  as  imperative  or  im- 
portant as  is  wailing.  This  leaping  or  wild  dancing2  is 

1  Instead  of  calling  out,  one  may  shoot  arrows  to  arrest  the  de- 
parting soul;  but  if  the  name  is  called  in  that  event  is  not  stated. 

2  The  northern  Chinese  Buddhists  also  still  have  the  cham  harail 
(sacred  dance)  as  a  part  of  their  religious  rites. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  24! 

performed  three  times.  There  is  also  mention  of  a  three- 
fold deasil  (a  Hindu  rite)  around  the  grave,  but  as  if  it 
were  an  unusual  custom.  In  this  case  the  mourner  with 
bared  left  arm  walks  around  the  grave  from  left  to  right 
three  times.  Seven  is  also  a  holy  or  at  least  respectful 
number,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  on  the  death  of 
an  emperor  his  revered  body  is  put  into  the  coffin  on  the 
seventh  day  after  death  and  buried  in  the  seventh  month, 
while  his  ancestral  temple  embraces  seven  small  fanes.1 
In  feeding  the  dead  the  mouth  is  stuffed  with  rice  and  pieces 
of  flesh  are  placed  beside  the  corpse.  Ridicule  is  made  of 
the  idea  that  the  dead  actually  need  the  food.  One  good 
man  filled  jars  with  pickles  for  his  dead  wife  and  he  is 
laughed  at;  but  the  explanation  that  the  jars  are  not  really 
intended  to  feed  the  dead  is  historically  false,  though  doubt- 
less when  the  Li  Ki  was  composed  a  more  refined  meaning 
was  current.  Incense  (of  aromatic  wood)  is  burned  to 
attract  and  show  respect  to  the  dead;  perhaps  earlier  to 
dissipate  odours  less  pleasant.  Candles  on  the  bier  are  not 
to  cheer  but  chase  the  spirits. 

From  the  formal  recommendation  of  the  Li  Ki  we  learn 
that  the  constant  sacrifices  were  first  the  great  seasonal 
sacrifices  2  offered  by  the  emperor  to  Heaven  and  Earth, 
who  also  sacrificed  to  the  four  quarters  and  to  [the  spirits 
of  ?]  mountains  and  rivers.3  The  bull-sacrifice  was  reserved 

1  These   were   erected   to   his   "spiritual   sovereigns"    (ancestral 
ghosts).    It  is  they  who  punish  a  bad  king   ("saying,  'Why  dost 
thou  oppress  my  people?  '"),  quite  as  much  as  does  God.    Thus,  too, 
of  the  people.     In  the  Shu  a  king  says:     "The  former  kings  will 
punish  you  (the  people),  if  you  disobey  me  and  when  they  punish 
you  from  above,  you  will  have  no  escape."    The  Seven  Directors  of 
Heaven  may  have  been  thus  conceived. 

2  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  according  to  the  express  statements  of 
the  Shu  King  neither  Heaven  nor  ancestral  spirits  accept  a  sacrifice 
as  such ;  "  only  the  sincere  and  reverent "  can  have  their  sacrifices 
accepted.    Reverence  disposes  Heaven  to  show  favour  and  to  make 
one  wise  or  virtuous.     Conversely,  calamities  sent  by  Heaven  may  be 
averted  (they  are  chastisements  and  cease  when  no  longer  required)  ; 
but  calamities  "brought  on  by  oneself  "  are  not  to  be  escaped." 

3  On  a  punitive  expedition  the  emperor  sacrificed  also  to  the  God 
of  War.     When  mourning  for  his  father  (for  three  years)  the  em- 


242  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

for  royalty.  Two  bulls  were  sacrificed  to  Heaven  and 
Earth,  when  a  new  city  was  founded,  by  the  emperor's  own 
hand.  Nobles  might  not  sacrifice  to  Heaven  but  must 
sacrifice  to  Earth  and  to  their  own  district  spirits,  using 
rams  and  boars  for  this  purpose.  Lesser  officials  used 
lesser  animals,  and  common  people  made  offerings  of  their 
ordinary  food,  such  as  rice,  eggs,  geese,  or  pigs.  There  is 
no  "  unclean "  animal.  At  a  sacrifice,  the  emperor  eats 
beef  or  dog's  meat  with  equal  complacency.  The  object 
of  sacrifice  is  clearly  stated  to  be  the  pleasuring  of  spirits 
with  music,  food,  or  incense,  in  order  to  their  appearance 
at  the  sacrificer's  altar  and  the  "  adjustment  of  their  rela- 
tions "  with  man.  Sacrifice  in  view  of  supposed  transgres- 
sion is  acceptable  to  the  gods,  although  it  is  drily  remarked 
that  "  repentance  never  overtakes  the  past."  In  general, 
there  was  a  "  minister  of  religion,"  to  regulate  all  services 
rendered  to  the  Manes  and  other  spirits.  Once  there  is  men- 
tion of  a  noble  lord  who  wished  to  sacrifice  himself  for  the 
sins  of  his  people ;  and  the  royal  prayer  that  evil  and  guilt, 
inferred  from  national  calamities,  may  be  expiated  by 
the  speaker,  not  by  the  people,  sufficiently  indicates  that 
the  idea  of  transferred  sin  is  not  unfamiliar.  Usually, 
however,  sacrifices  are  simply  to  please,  given  with  affection 
or  reverence;  or,  it  may  be,  for  aid,  and  after  success,  as 
it  were  in  thanksgiving,  for  victory  or  harvest.  Typical 
is  the  great  imperial  sacrifice,  when  the  ruler  and  his  wife 
take  alternate  parts  in  presenting  offerings,  and  all  is  done 
solely  "  to  please  the  spirits  of  the  dead  and  unite  the  living 
and  the  disembodied."  As  shown  in  the  Shi  King,  an  offer- 
ing to  spirits  is  a  sort  of  family  feast,  which  on  occasion 
may  become  a  means  of  asking  aid  from  the  ghostly  chief 
guests.  As  with  the  queen,  so  with  other  women,  they  are 
not  debarred  from  religious  offices  in  honour  of  the  dead.1 

peror  sacrificed  only  to  Heaven,  Earth,  and  the  spirits  of  land  and 
grain.  One-tenth  of  the  royal  expenditures  was  devoted  to  defray- 
ing the  cost  of  sacrifices. 

i  Otherwise  the  position  of  woman  is  one  of  marked  inferiority. 
She  has  nothing  to  do  with  religion  in  general.    Her  whole  duty  is 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  243 

All  approved  offerings  and  sacrifices  were  to  beneficent 
beings.  There  was  no  official  cult  of  evil  spirits.  Yet 
they  were  recognized  by  ceremonies,  such  as  the  noisy  dem- 
onstration to  drive  away  demons  of  pestilence.  This  cere- 
mony impressed  Confucius,  apparently  as  a  sort  of  recog- 
nition of  their  power,  which  he  emphasized  by  respectful 
behaviour  toward  them.  Drought,  too,  is  an  evil  demon. 
In  short,  as  elsewhere,  most  natural  ills  are  demons  or 
brought  in  by  demons.  These  may  act  as  servants  of  spirits 
for  chastisement,  so  that  even  the  common  man  must  be 
religiously  observant  of  all  rites  permitted  by  his  circum- 
stances, although  it  is  said  that  the  complex  ceremonies  of 
social  and  religious  life  are  not  for  common  people,  only 
for  the  higher  classes.1 

At  the  present  day  China  still  bows  to  every  sort  of  spirit, 
nor  are  all  easy  to  divine.  Animals  represent  souls  in 
many  cases,  as  when  pigs  and  rats  are  possessed  of  girls' 
souls.  But  there  are  also  natural  spirit-animals,  serpents, 
which  are  not  necessarily  (though  they  may  be)  "pos- 
sessed " ;  cocks,  as  holy  birds  which  chase  demons ;  the  tor- 
toise, the  image  of  which  on  a  grave  gives  a  man's  descend- 
ants long  life ;  foxes,  which  take  human  shape.  An  ordi- 
nary animal,  however,  is  not  worshipped  for  itself  but  for 
possessing  a  soul  of  a  man;  some  by  eating  a  man's  body 
eat  his  soul,  etc.  There  is  no  end  to  the  metamorphoses 
conceived  as  possible.  Men  become  rocks ;  poles  have  spir- 
its; metals  become  animate;  men  become  water-spirits 

"  neither  to  do  wrong  nor  to  do  good  (conspicuously)  ;  only  to 
think  about  the  spirits  and  the  food  and  to  cause  her  parents  no 
sorrow."  Compare  Pericles  (ap.  Thucydides)  to  the  women  of 
Athens :  "  Let  there  be  as  little  talk  as  possible  among  men  about 
you,  either  in  praise  or  blame."  In  almost  the  exact  words  of  the 
Hindu  legislators  it  is  said  that  a  woman's  duty  is  "  in  youth,  to 
obey  her  father  or  elder  brother;  when  married  to  obey  her  hus- 
band ;  and  to  obey  her  son  when  she  becomes  a  widow." 

1  Extraordinary  in  so  moral  a  code  as  that  of  the  Li  Ki  is  the 
statement  that  the  high  class  officials  are  not  amenable  to  the  laws : 
"High  officials  are  not  bound  by  penal  statutes,  as  common  people 
are  not  bound  by  ceremonies." 


244  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

(kvei)  and  cause  disease,  etc.  One-legged  hill-spirits  are 
not  spirits  of  the  hill  but  malformed  spirits  living  in  it. 
Against  all  evil  spirits  drums  and  flags  will  avail ;  exorcism 
also,  with  precedent  fasting ;  or  the  blood  of  a  dog  or  cock ; 
or  clubs,  knives,  red  (fire-cracker)  flame  or  colour;  even 
twigs  or  a  mirror.  Dog,  cock,  and  monkey  (as  scapegoat) 
carry  off  disease-demons ;  amulets  avert  them.  For  good 
luck  are  efficacious  coffin-nails,  the  svastika,  coins,  horse- 
shoes, the  peach-tree  and  its  wood,  apparently  not  as  spirits. 
Each  of  the  five  elements,  metal,  wood,  water,  fire,  and 
earth,  has  its  indwelling  spirit  or  demon.  Many  of  these, 
like  the  svastika,  may  be  of  Buddhistic  origin. 

Apart  from  ethical  and  political  questions,  the  purely  re- 
ligious aspect  of  China  did  not  change  much  from  the  early 
period  till  the  advent  of  Buddhism,  and  even  after  this 
time  it  has  remained  substantially  the  same  till  the  present 
day,  except  that  certain  Buddhistic  spirits  have  been  widely 
adopted.  The  chief  deities  worshipped  in  this  Chinese  sys- 
tem are  first  Heaven  and  all  its  parts,  Sun,  Moon,  Stars, 
the  five  planets,  especially  the  twenty-eight  signs  of  the 
lunar  zodiac  and  certain  constellations,  such  as  the  Great 
Bear.  Second,  the  Earth  and  all  its  parts,  mountains,  rivers, 
soil,  grain,  earthquakes,  drought,  as  spirits  of  good  or  ill. 
Third,  Wind,  Rain,  Heat,  Cold,  Thunder,  Lightning,  that 
is,  all  meteorological  phenomena.  Fourth,  the  deified  Sea- 
sons and  Quarters,  four  each.  Fifth,  The  Five  Parts  of 
the  House,  Gate,  Door,  Wall,  Hearth,  and  Court.  Heaven 
and  the  Planets  were  regarded  as  emperors  with  the  stars 
as  their  officials,  though  they  were  but  little  personified. 
Titles  of  the  lower  deities  were  indifferently  Prince,  Mas- 
ter, or  god,  thus,  Prince  of  the  Wind,  Master  of  Rain,  Door 
God,  or  simply  the  Thunderer.  Gradually  dead  persons,  as 
tutelary  divinities,  have  taken  the  place  of  original  spirits 
in  the  case  of  Soil  and  Grain,  Kou  Lung  of  the  soil  and 
Ch'i  of  the  grain.  Military  and  other  heroes  have  thus 
after  death  been  deified  as  God  of  War  and  as  other  spirits, 
such  as  the  spirit  of  water  and  of  epidemics.  Even  a  de- 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  245 

ceased  woman,  under  the  Han  dynasty,  was  made  Princess 
of  Demons,  because,  dying  in  childbirth,  she  appeared  sub- 
sequently as  a  ghost.  So  a  few  ghosts  became  national 
gods,  while  the  regular  family  ghosts  were  divinities  only 
to  their  own  families.  The  emperor  (and  his  representa- 
tives) sacrificed  to  nature-spirits;  common  people  only  to 
their  own  ancestors  and  to  their  door-god  or  hearth-god. 
But  about  the  time  of  the  Christian  era  these  rules  were 
more  or  less  neglected  and  sacrifice  was  permitted  by  others 
than  the  Emperor  and  his  officials,  even  priestesses  being 
allowed  to  make  offerings  in  the  temples.  If  there  were  no 
officials  at  hand,  the  people  themselves  might  worship  the 
gods  instead  of  having  the  service  performed  by  officials.1 

These  are  the  chief  traits  of  Sinism  as  gleaned  from  the 
literature  antecedent  to  the  great  teachers  of  China.  Be- 
fore turning  to  their  work,  we  may  for  a  moment  consider 
the  negative  side  of  this  religion,  and  what  the  records  fail 
to  say.  Creation  is  mythologically  ascribed  not  to  Heaven 
or  God  but  to  the  cosmic  Giant  P'anku,  who  is  naively  de- 
scribed as  a  carpenter  hewing  the  world  out  of  unformed 
material  and  then  as  providing  material  by  becoming  in  his 
own  body  the  universe.  He  chiselled  out  of  masses  of 
granite,  floating  in  space,  sun,  moon,  and  stars.  His  labour 
done,  he  died.  His  head  became  mountains ;  his  voice,  thun- 
der; his  beard,  the  stars,  etc.  Certain  natural  phenomena, 
worshipped  by  most  savages,  are  expressly  mentioned  as 
worshipped  in  the  later  literature  and  they  may  be  implied 
in  the  earlier,  though  there  is  little  said  about  them.  The 
tortoise  and  divination  plant  suggest  that  these  may  have 

1  A.  Forke,  Lun-Heng,  in  the  Ostasiatische  Studien,  Leipzig,  1906, 
p.  222f.  Confucianism  as  a  philosophy  held  various  opinions  re- 
garding God  and  the  soul.  Some  of  the  learned  scholars  of  the  fifth 
century  A.  D.  denied  providential  retribution  in  the  present  and  the 
existence  of  the  soul  in  the  future.  The  individual  soul  has  many 
divisions,  as  the  blood-soul,  breath-soul  and  others  less  vital  in  nail 
and  hair ;  some  are  gross  and  some  etherial.  The  shadow  is  a 
soul  and  the  dream  is  a  soul's  journey.  In  this  soul-belief  the 
ancient  Chinese  were  on'a  par  with  savages,  as  they  were  in  con- 
ceiving of  all  other  spirits  as  bound  to  matter. 


246  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

been  holy  in  themselves,  and  we  know  that  there  were  holy 
trees,  such  as  the  acacia,  plum,  and  fir.  Serpents  were 
prayed  to  as  dragon  water-gods  and  sacrifice  was  made  to 
them.  In  756  B.  c.,  sacrifice  was  made  to  a  yellow  snake 
as  a  "  manifestation  of  God."  Stones  resembling  human 
beings  were  worshipped ;  probably  also  phallic  stones,  as 
they  are  today,  though  their  original  function  is  almost  for- 
gotten.1 The  spring-festival  and  fire-walking  rite,  in  which 
men  leaped  through  fire,  hacking  themselves  with  knives, 
preserve  a  similar  recollection  of  a  fire-  or  sun-cult.  Animal 
myths  show  that  peculiar  mana  powers  were  supposed  to 
reside  in  certain  phenomena.  Shrines  are  found  erected 
to  animals  and  even  today  stone  animals  erected  upon 
tombs  are  very  commonly  worshipped.  Such  modern  fea- 
tures have  probably  always  made  part  of  the  popular  re- 
ligion, which,  like  all  Oriental  religions,  is  for  ever  making 
new  gods.  Thus  the  great  professional  gods  of  today  are 
not  a  trait  peculiar  to  modern  China,  but  are  the  most  recent 
expression  of  this  ancient  ancestor-worshipping  people. 

But  what  is  entirely  lacking  in  the  older  religion  is  the 
idea  of  the  priest  and  his  inevitable  concomitants.  Until 
the  advent  of  Buddhism,  the  Chinese  religion  had  neither 
a  priesthood  nor  a  mythology.  Buddhism  entered  China 
before  the  Christian  era,  according  to  received  tradition, 
though  there  was  no  active  propaganda  till  the  first  cen- 
tury of  our  era.  For  the  first  time  in  China,  it  offered  the 
spectacle  of  monks,  virtually  priests,  united  in  a  body  and 
spiritually  set  apart.  Old  China  had  no  priest.  Services 
were  conducted  by  the  emperor,  who  even  slaughtered  sac- 
rificial victims  with  his  own  hand,  or  by  the  mandarins  who 
officially  represented  him.  It  is  indeed  sometimes  said  that 
the  emperor  was  "  High  Priest,"  but  this  is  a  figure  of 
speech.  To  be  a  high  priest  one  must  have  lower  priests 
under  him;  but  the  mandarins  were  nobles  not  priests. 
Emperor  and  nobles  officiated,  as  in  their  humbler  worship 

i-Man,  London,  1913,  No.  41. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  I  247 

did  the  ordinary  householder,  without  mediators,  even  as 
the  spirits  worshipped  performed  no  mediatorial  office  in 
respect  of  the  Supreme  Lord.  And  as  there  was  no  priest 
there  was  no  hell  and  no  dire  fate  to  be  dreaded  hereafter. 
So,  as  to  the  gods,  the  old  Chinese  worshippers  had  no  vain 
imaginings.  The  gods  or  spirits  were  too  vague  to  be  hu- 
manized; there  was  no  Olympus,  no  adventures,  war-like 
or  amorous,  of  the  celestial  spirits.  These  lacunae  are  due 
to  the  same  cause.  The  uninstructed  Chinaman  neither 
invented  a  picturesque  heaven  above  nor  a  hell  below,  be- 
cause his  whole  spiritual  interest  lay  in  the  lives  already 
lived  by  his  ancestors.  In  contrast  with  Semitic  occupa- 
tion with  the  present  and  Egyptian  preoccupation  with  the 
future,  the  Chinaman,  it  has  been  said  with  some  truth,  was 
occupied  with  the  past.  He  looked  backward  rather  than 
forward;  he  was  more  concerned  with  his  ancestors  than 
with  his  own  ghostly  future.  The  gods  he  worshipped  were 
mainly  ancestral  individuals  and  group-gods  who  lacked 
individuality,  "  spirits  of  mountains,"  u  spirits  of  streams." 

Few  outward  changes  in  the  cult  of  spirits  or  ancestors 
are  recorded.  Libations  were  added  to  music  to  attract 
the  spirits,  we  are  told;  but  even  this  must  be  taken  in  a 
restricted  sense,  not  as  implying  that  the  ghosts  had  not 
been  fed  previously  but  that  spirituous  libations  were  added 
to  music  and  food.  Again,  the  ancestor  was  originally  sup- 
posed to  reside  during  sacrifice  in  a  wooden  tablet ;  but  dur- 
ing the  Chou  dynasty  it  became  customary  to  let  living 
representatives  of  the  dead  impersonate  him  for  the  time  be- 
ing. These  representatives  were  temporarily  revered  and 
could  make  convenient  answers  when  begged  for  favours. 
This  practice,  however,  was  given  up  in  the  third  century 
B.  c.  The  chief  change  was  in  the  direction  of  anthropo- 
morphization  in  the  case  of  Heaven  as  a  personal  god  with 
human  attributes  and  in  the  establishment  of  a  philosophical 
basis  for  religious  practices. 

This  basis  is  the  antithesis  of  the  Yang  and  Yin  as  under- 
stood by  the  explainers  of  the  Yih-King,  whose  mysterious 


248  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

alternate  lines,  whole  or  broken,  appear  to  have  been  orig- 
inally nothing  more  than  a  means  of  divination.  But  a 
profound  meaning  was  given  to  them  from  early  times  and 
the  strong  and  weak  lines  were  interpreted  as  representing 
fire  and  cold  or  male  and  female  elements  in  the  universe. 
Together  they  govern  productive  nature.  The  Way  of  na- 
ture is  the  method,  antedating  Heaven  itself,  through  which 
order  and  righteousness,  based  on  order,  first  came  into 
being.1  Thus  the  Way  or  Tao  may  be  called  the  mother  of 
all  things,  though  neither  thing  nor  spirit.  Man,  as  part 
of  the  universe,  has  also  the  dual  nature  of  the  Tao,  which 
is  expressed  most  conspicuously  by  Heaven  and  Earth,  par- 
ents of  all,  one  warm  and  light,  one  cold  and  dark.  Man's 
earthy  soul  at  death  returns  to  earth.  This  is  the  Kvei  or 
evil  soul,  as  opposed  to  the  Shen  or  spiritual  soul,  which, 
manifested  in  breath,  at  the  death  of  the  body  returns  to 
heaven  and  "  moves  on  high  as  a  shining  light." 

1  Compare  the  Vedic  Rita,  Right  Order,  also  Zoroastrian,  Asha, 
and  the  Egyptian  idea  of  an  Order-goddess  above  the  gods. 


CHAPTER  FIFTEEN 

RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA   II 
CONFUCIUS,    LAO-TSE,   TAOISM 

Two  great  religious  leaders  appeared  in  China  in  the  sixth 
century  B.  c.  Neither,  however,  taught  a  new  religion. 
One  was  Lao-tse  and  the  other  was  Confucius.1  Lao-tse 
(born  in  601  B.  c.)  was  known  later  as  the  Wizard  of  the 
West,  whence  some  have  supposed  that  he  came  from  the 
western  world  and  even  that  he  taught  a  Taoism  derived 
from  India.  On  the  contrary,  Taoism  is  thoroughly  Chin- 
ese and  Lao  himself  was  foreign  only  to  the  Middle  King- 
dom, being  a  native  of  the  South  (Ch'u  state).  He  ap- 
peared foreign  because  he  was  a  mystic  and  mysticism 
was  strange  to  the  practical  Chinaman.  Yet  the  basis  of 
Taoism  is  inherent  in  the  King,  and  Taoism  belonged  to 
Confucius  as  much  as  to  Laotse;  but  Lao  differed  from 
Confucius  as  to  the  means  of  perfecting  oneself  in  Tao. 
The  chief  work  attributed  to  Lao  is  the  Tao-teh-King  or 
Canon  of  the  Way  and  Purity.  If  not  his  text,  it  epitomizes 
his  philosophy  in  eighty-one  paragraphs. 

Both  of  these  teachers  recognized  that  orderly  goodness 
is  the  natural  state  of  the  universe  controlled  by  Tao,  and 
that  man  as  part  of  the  universe  and  naturally  good  is,  one 
may  say,  religiously  required  to  preserve  and  heighten  that 
goodness.  Cultivation  of  the  Tao  is  man's  duty.  Lao  lays 
stress  on  the  firmness  and  impartiality  of  Heaven  as  model 
behaviour  for  man  to  imitate  and  urges  also  the  duty  of 

1  These  names  both  contain  in  Chinese  the  word  tsu  or  tse  (sage). 
Lao-tse  is  the  Venerable  Sage;  Confucius  is  a  Latinized  form  of 
K'ung-fu-tse,  the  Kung-family  sage.  So  Mencius  and  Licius  are  for 
Mang-tse  and  Lieh-tse. 

249 


250  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

compliance,  which  means  that,  as  parts  of  the  universe  do 
not  interfere  with  each  other  (are  compliant),  so  the  ruler 
should  be  compliant :  "  The  perfect  ruler  complies  with 
the  will  of  the  people,"  he  sees  to  it  that  their  wishes  are 
observed.  Compliance  tends  to  humility,  which  is  also 
exemplified  in  nature.  It  is  the  humility  of  the  great  river 
ever  seeking  lower  ground  and  gaining  thereby  in  strength, 
as  it  is  the  more  sought  by  other  streams  the  lower  it  is. 
Arrogance  and  self-assertion  have  no  place  in  nature ;  what 
is  weaker  than  water,  yet  what  is  stronger?  One  should, 
too,  not  be  full  of  oneself ;  emptiness,  that  is  freedom  from 
materialistic  desires  and  aversions,  characterizes  the  sage 
and  the  good. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Shen  Tao  (compare  the  Japanese 
Shinto)  or  Spiritual  Way  led  to  that  of  an  apathetic  atti- 
tude toward  the  affairs  of  life.  Dispassion  leads  to  com- 
plete indifference,  including  disregard  of  knowledge,  which 
is  as  baleful  as  desire.1  To  gain  real  wisdom  one  must 
discard  knowledge.  To  be  full  of  the  divine  one  must  be 
empty  of  worldliness.  There  remains  for  the  one  seeking 
wisdom  only  intuition  as  a  guide  to  Tao.  Lao  was  a  mystic, 
who  "  sought  Tao "  by  contemplation.  Probably  among 
the  recluses  of  his  day  there  were  others  who  sought  it  also 
by  inducing  trances  through  breath-suppression  and  the  like. 
At  any  rate  it  is  at  this  point  that  the  vulgar  interpretation 
of  Lao-tse's  idea  begins.  Seeking  Tao  became  nothing  more 
than  seeking  for  life-elixirs,  since  Lao  himself  taught  that 
Tao  might  be  obtained  even  in  life.  The  exercises  of  con- 
templation soon  became  the  "  recondite  calisthenics "  in- 
culcated by  the  later  doctors  of  the  school  as  a  means  of 
securing  longevity  equal  to  that  of  old  Phang,  who  "  by 
getting  Tao  "  lived  on  earth  for  nigh  two  thousand  years. 
The  passive  attitude  expresses  itself  in  universal  benevo- 
lence ;  this  leads  to  practical  immunity  from  danger  of  poi- 

1  Lao-tse  himself  taught  that  education  and  forms  of  worship  are 
not  only  vain  but  injurious.  The  Taoist  shibboleth  is  Wu-wei, 
"  not  doing,"  inaction. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  251 

sonous  or  wild  beasts,  a  Buddhistic  trait.  Gentleness,  fru- 
gality, humility,  shrinking  back  or  compliance,  not  putting 
oneself  forward,  are  virtues  taught  by  the  Tao.  The  Taoist 
has  no  aim,  no  desire ;  "  he  rests  and  all  is  well."  Sages  of 
old  had  virtue  without  knowing  it.  They  no  more  "  tried  to 
be  virtuous  "  than  a  black  crow  tries  to  be  black.  They 
did  not  try  to  be  benevolent;  they  were  benevolent  just  as 
they  were  tall  or  hungry.  Classes  did  not  exist ;  men  lived 
naturally,  not  only  like  animals  but  with  animals,  on  a 
friendly  footing,  as  one  family.  All  this  is  the  usual  vain 
imagining  of  those  who  see  the  perfect  age  in  the  past 
and  find  in  man  a  natural  goodness  which  can  be  brought  to 
light  by  divesting  him  of  the  artificial  obstruction  to  per- 
fection with  which  civilization  has  surrounded  him.  There 
is  therefore  nothing  very  new  to  us  in  Lao's  doctrine  though 
it  was  strange  to  his  hearers.  As  an  ethical  teacher,  he 
alone  reached  the  height  of  proclaiming  the  rule  of  "  re- 
paying injury  with  kindness,"  as  a  norm  of  conduct.  Con- 
fucius, confronted  with  this  doctrine,  repudiated  it  and 
taught  instead  "  reciprocity  " —  treat  others  as  they  treat 
you.  Be  just  to  the  injurer,  kind  to  the  kind,  is  Confu- 
cius's  rule. 

Before  speaking  of  the  later  forms  of  Taoism  it  will  be 
necessary  now  to  examine  the  teaching  of  Confucius  him- 
self. Fifty  years  younger  than  Lao-tse,  a  practical  states- 
man, a  man  of  the  world,  Confucius,  it  is  said,  once  paid 
a  visit  to  Lao,  who  was  at  that  time  over  eighty  years  of 
age,  but  came  away  dumbfounded;  he  could  not  under- 
stand the  sage  at  all  and  felt  as  if  he  had  "  encountered  a 
dragon."  We  can  easily  believe  this.  Confucius,  a  timid 
man  in  any  event,  was  not  an  original  thinker  and  when 
he  met  one  he  felt  overcome.  The  circumstances  of  Con- 
fucius's  life  are  much  better  known  than  those  of  the  Wiz- 
ard of  the  West.  He  was  born  in  Lu  (part  of  Shangtung) 
when  his  father  was  already  over  seventy.  He  became  a 
teacher  at  an  early  age  and  spent  his  life  trying  to  get,  and 
occasionally  obtaining,  political  preferment,  though  he  never 


252  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

secured  a  permanent  position.  He  died  a  disappointed  old 
man,  one  might  almost  say  a  disappointed  politician,1  were 
it  not  that  his  eagerness  to  get  office  was  inspired  by  a 
real  zeal  to  put  in  practice  statescraft  which  he  felt  would 
better  the  world.  Practical  politics,  ethically  supported, 
was  his  main  interest  in  life.  He  had  not  a  spiritual  na- 
ture. It  is  probably  correct  to  say  that  he  believed  in 
Heaven,  if  not  in  God,  but  he  certainly  taught  that  the  best 
way  to  treat  the  spirits  was  to  let  them  alone.  He  implied 
to  his  disciples  that  no  man  can  know  anything  about  spirits 
or  life  after  death,  and  that  it  was  more  important  for  a 
man  to  know  himself  and  attend  to  his  present  life  than  to 
worry  about  spirits  and  the  life  to  come.2  At  the  same 
time  he  was  too  staunch  a  conservative  to  neglect  the  rites 
and  ceremonies  of  religion.  His  great  service  to  his  coun- 
try was  in  collecting  its  ancient  literature.  He  himself 
wrote  the  annals  of  the  Chou  dynasty;  but  for  a  moralist 
he  wrote  them  ill,  the  Ch'un-Ts'iu,  or  Spring  and  Autumn 
(Annals,  as  his  work  is  named)  being  not  only  defective  but 
"  evasive  and  deceptive."  His  countryman  Kung-Yang  says 
that  "  it  conceals  facts  out  of  regard  for  the  aristocracy,  for 
kinsmen,  and  for  men  of  worth,"  a  native  judgment  which 
needs  only  the  comment  that  "  concealment "  includes  mis- 
representation. Confucius  must  not  be  blamed  too  severely ; 
the  dynasty  he  was  describing  was  that  of  his  patron.  Yet 
despite  this,  it  is  somewhat  of  a  shock  to  learn  that  the 
greatest  religious  teacher  of  China,  who  is  now  worshipped 
in  hundreds  of  temples  as  a  superman,  was  a  deceitful  his- 
torian. The  fact  makes  it  the  more  doubtful  whether  the 
works  he  collected  were  not  also  transmitted  in  a  form  use- 
ful to  the  transmitter's  purpose. 

The  many  anecdotes  which  were  current  in  regard  to  the 

1  Chuang-tse  taunts  Confucius  with  his  political  disappointments 
and  says  that  he  was  twice  expelled  from  his  native  district  of  Lu, 
tabooed  in  Wei,  and  a  failure  in  Tsi.     Confucius  was  really  in  exile 
for  fourteen  years.     He  was  recalled  home  at  the  age  of  sixty-eight. 

2  This  is  exactly  Buddha's  attitude.    See  above,  pp.  185,  192. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  253 

Logia  of  Confucius  were  collected  and  edited  as  the  Lun- 
Yii  some  time  after  the  master's  death.  He  believed  that  to 
get  wisdom  and  attain  Tao  one  must  get  the  knowledge  of 
the  past,  which  represents  the  processes  of  Tao  and  shows 
how  evil  kings  died  evilly  and  good  kings  had  Heaven's 
support.  He  endorsed  with  his  approval  all  the  rules  of 
ancient  days,  recommending  a  strict  observance  of  the  cere- 
monial, rites,  customs,  and  etiquette  of  the  virtuous  men  of 
old.  To  know  these,  to  follow  these,  to  become  as  the  an- 
cients were,  would  be  to  become  as  perfect  as  the  ancients, 
who  lived  with  due  regard  to  the  Right  Way.  This  was  all 
practical,  not  religious,  though  visionary.  He  saw  no  use 
in  mysticism.  He  recognized  no  value  in  prayer.  When 
his  disciples  asked  if  they  should  pray  for  him  in  his  extreme 
illness,  he  replied  in  effect,  Do  not  pray  for  me,  saying  "  my 
praying  has  been  for  a  long  time,"  implying  that  he  had 
long  ceased  to  pray,  having  nothing  to  repent  of  and  no 
favours  to  ask  of  the  spirits  of  the  upper  and  lower  worlds. 
He  is  described  as  mild  and  gentle  in  demeanour  though 
dignified,  of  easy  manners  but  very  respectful.1  He  was  a 
firm  believer  in  himself  as  Heaven's  agent.  On  being  ad- 
vised not  to  go  among  the  K'uang  people,  he  replied,  "  What 
can  they  do  to  me?  Will  Heaven  let  the  cause  of  truth 
perish  ? "  As  benevolence  and  knowledge  were  favourite 
themes  of  his,  he  was  asked  to  define  them.  "  Benevolence," 
he  said,  "  is  to  love  men ;  knowledge  is  to  know  men."  He 
taught  no  secret  doctrine.  Like  Buddha,  he  expressly  de- 
clared that  he  kept  no  esoteric  wisdom  concealed  from  the 
crowd.  "  Do  not  think  that  I  conceal  anything,"  he  said, 
"  I  conceal  nothing  from  you,  my  disciples ;  I  do  nothing 
which  I  do  not  show ;  that  is  my  way."  "  Four  things," 
they  reported  of  him,  "the  master  taught,  letters,  ethics, 

1  Confucius  was  probably  superstitious  by  nature.  The  sound  of 
thunder  or  the  sight  of  a  mourner  discomposed  him.  He  was  a  hard 
drinker,  but  light  eater.  Nowadays  he  would  be  described  as  a 
charitable,  timid,  finnicky  person,  rather  meticulous ;  he  was,  for 
example,  very  particular  in  regard  to  the  length  of  his  night-clothes 
and  the  use  of  chop-sticks. 


254  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

thoroughness  of  thought,  and  truthfulness."  He  did  not 
teach  religion  and  were  it  not  for  his  disciples  he  might  well 
be  omitted  from  a  history  of  religion  except  as  a  collector 
of  religious  literature.  But  owing  to  his  commanding  posi- 
tion as  guide  of  Chinese  thought  for  two  thousand  years  he 
is  entitled  to  attention  even  in  his  unreligious  dicta.  "  Your 
good  villagers,"  he  once  said,  "  are  thieves  of  virtue,"  mean- 
ing that  they  were  illiberal  and  narrow.  Again  he  said: 
"  If  I  were  sure  of  becoming  wealthy  I  might  become  a 
groom  to  attain  that  end ;  but  as  it  is  uncertain  whether  even 
then  I  should  get  rich,  I  will  pursue  what  I  love."  Of  benev- 
olence and  learning  he  said,  "  The  love  of  being  benevolent 
without  the  love  of  learning  induces  only  foolish  simplicity." 
Not  his,  but  passed  unreproved  by  him,  is  the  mot  quoted 
from  his  disciple;  "If  one  does  not  transgress  in  great  vir- 
tues he  may  transgress  in  small  virtues."  Two  political 
maxims  are  Conf ucius's  own.  One  is :  "  He  who  gov- 
erns by  his  virtue  is  like  the  North  Star;  it  keeps  its  place 
and  all  the  stars  turn  toward  it."  This  is  the  kernel  of  the 
Great  Learning;  it  is  the  doctrine  of  example.  Confucius 
really  believed  that  the  people  would  be  virtuous  if  the  em- 
peror was  virtuous  and  that  all  a  statesman  had  to  do  to 
secure  virtue  and  happiness  in  the  state  was  to  have  the 
emperor  well  trained  in  approved  practices.1  The  deplor- 
able state  of  China  in  his  day  is  remarked  upon  by  him  and 
it  is  characteristic  that  he  emphasizes  the  decay  in  manners : 
"  The  manners  of  the  age  have  long  been  in  a  sad  condition." 
The  second  maxim  is  implied  in  the  remark  that  "  the  pur- 
suit of  strange  doctrine  is  injurious."  China  has  always 
been  intolerant  of  heresies.  Confucius  also  laments  the 
paucity  of  scholars  and  of  records. 

The  attitude  of  Lao  toward  Confucius  seems  to  have  been 
one  of  scornful  silence.  But  Lieh-tse,  the  later  disciple  of 

1  Conf  ucius's  favourite  disciple,  Yen  Hui,  said  with  the  approba- 
tion of  his  master :  "  Teach  the  people  propriety  and  music  and 
they  will  not  fortify  towns,  but  fuse  their  swords  into  agricultural 
implements"  (inaugurating  a  golden  age). 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  255 

Lao,  and  Chuang-tse,  the  contemporary  of  Mencius,  were 
voluble  abusers  of  the  sage  and  his  system,  which  Chuang- 
tse  calls  "  random  jargon."  By  the  fourth  century  B.  c.  the 
battle  between  the  schools  was  at  its  height  and  produced 
the  two  greatest  upholders  of  the  old  masters.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  Chuang-tse  really  did  more  than  uphold 
Lao's  reputation;  for  if  it  were  not  for  this  learned  and 
brilliant  follower,  the  master  would  have  been  forgotten, 
except  as  his  ill-used  name  persists  as  a  cloak  to  all  the 
vain  superstitions  of  later  and  modern  Taoism. 

Confucius  was  a  statesman  with  ideals  which,  if  not 
broad,  were  high.  He  also,  it  is  clear,  built  his  ideals  on  a 
belief  in  some  moral  power  "  making  for  righteousness  "  in 
the  universe.  Benevolence  was  characteristic  of  his  religion 
and  this  is  based  on  the  impartial  benevolence  of  Heaven,  as 
his  inculcation  of  "  right  adjustment,"  propriety,  and  ap- 
proval of  music  are  based  on  the  wish  to  imitate  Heaven's 
order  and  regularity.  What  made  him  great  is  the  fact  that 
he  exactly  represented  the  racial  spirit;  what  made  him 
popular  with  royalty  was  that  his  ideals  tended  to  uphold 
the  status  in  quo  ante.  In  desiring  to  bind  his  country  to 
old  ideas  he  implicitly  urged  official  suppression  of  all  per- 
sonal initiative.  As  any  such  initiative  tends  to  disturb  the 
State,  which  should  be  immutable,  such  a  teacher  was  an  ideal 
instructor  in  the  eyes  of  a  State  desiring  to  remain  without 
change  for  ever.  As  a  laudator  temporis  acti  he  was  no 
innovator,  but  he  was  an  invaluable  preserver  of  beliefs  and 
forms.  Though  a  ritualist  by  nature  and  chiefly  concerned 
with  the  "  three  hundred  points  of  ceremony  and  three  thou- 
sand points  of  behaviour,"  his  morality  really  rested  on  a 
metaphysical  basis,  as  did  that  of  Lao,  who  also  had  no  other 
religion.  Confucius  taught  ethics  practically  and  the  chief 
virtue  he  inculcated  was  that  of  piety,  of  the  son  toward  the 
father  and  mother,  of  the  subject  toward  the  emperor.  This 
maintains  on  the  one  hand  the  worship  of  ancestors  who  are 
dead  and  on  the  other  loyalty  toward  the  living  sovereign. 
In  the  latter  regard  it  makes  the  emperor,  as  Son  of  Heaven 


256  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

(a  Ti),  the  object  of  religious  devotion  like  that  paid  to  the 
emperor  of  Japan.  This  Shinto  spirit  in  Confucianism  ex- 
plains why  it,  rather  than  the  teaching  of  Lao-tse,  was  ex- 
alted by  emperors  as  well  as  by  all  those  who  trod  by  predi- 
lection the  way  of  their  fathers. 

A  supplementary  rule  ascribed  to  Confucius  as  part  of  his 
general  rule  of  piety  was  wifely  obedience,  troth  in  friend- 
ship, and  kindness  toward  those  who  deserved  it.  He  also 
commends  the  historical  statement  that  at  such  and  such 
periods  men  were  careful  not  to  injure  animal  life  need- 
lessly. His  general  ethical  system  has  been  codified.  Its 
chief  rules  are  to  be  pious,  as  explained  above,  to  be  benev- 
olent, to  cultivate  peace,  be  moderate,  study  diligently,  be 
correct  in  deportment  and  courteous  in  behaviour,  oppose 
false  accusations  and  false  doctrines,  control  angry  passions, 
and  pay  taxes.  There  are  many  similar  rules  but  not  a  word 
about  God.  It  is  a  system  of  morality  rather  than  of  reli- 
gion. Yet  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  it  was  a  religious 
matter  with  Confucius  to  worship  ghosts,  and  the  exercise  of 
the  virtues  he  recommends  was  also  religiously  binding. 
His  countrymen,  though  not  till  many  years  after  his  death, 
exalted  him,  first  as  a  noble,  then  as  the  perfect  sage,  and 
finally  served  him  as  a  god  with  many  sacrifices  and  temples. 
Sacrifice  was  indeed  made  at  his  tomb  in  the  second  century 
B.  c.,  but  his  first  temple  was  not  built  till  555  A.  D.  Later 
fables  exalt  his  divinity  and  relate  that  his  birth  was  her- 
alded by  strange  portents  and  miraculous  appearances ;  genii 
announced  to  his  mother  the  honour  in  store  for  her ;  fairies 
attended  at  his  nativity  —  the  usual  tales  that  cluster  about 
the  birth  of  a  god-man  in  the  Orient.1 

When  Lao-tse  died  is  not  known.  Confucius,  who  was 
born  in  551  B.  c.,  died  in  478  or  479.  Put  Shang,  one  of  his 
favourite  disciples,  lived  till  406  B.  c.  The  two  great  disci- 
ples of  Lao-tse  were  Lieh-tse,  who  lived  in  the  second  half  of 
the  fifth  century,  and  Chuang-tse,  who  lived  in  the  middle  of 

1  Douglass,  Confucianism  and  Taoism,  London,  1887,  p.  25. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  257 

the  fourth  century,  B.  c.  The  greatest  follower  of  Confucius 
was  Mang-tse  or  Mencius,  who  was  born  in  371(2)  and  died 
in  288(9)  B-  c-  We  thus  have  a  fairly  continuous  tradition 
in  respect  to  the  teaching  of  both  the  founders  of  Chinese 
religions.  Confucius's  disciples,  as  was  natural,  were  many 
more  than  those  of  the  mystic,  Lao,  and  several  of  them 
were  a  generation  younger  than  himself.1 

China  has  had  its  pessimists  as  well  as  its  optimists,  its 
hedonists  as  well  as  its  moralists.  Lieh-tse  (above)  inter- 
preted the  doctrine  of  his  master  to  mean  that  if  death  was 
a  return  to  non-existence,  one  might  as  well  get  what  pleas- 
ure one  could  from  this  present  life.  As  man  is  absorbed 
into  the  Creator,  man  may  also  become  divine;  that  is,  he 
may  not  only  brave  wild  beasts  with  impunity  but  he  may 
be  like  a  god,  walk  unharmed  through  fire  and  go  through 
the  air.  Another  follower  of  Lao-tse,  named  Moh  or 
Mih  Ti,2  eraggerated  Lao's  teaching  and  expounded  a  doc- 
trine of  saving  love.  Love  for  all  men  will  be  the  salvation 
of  the  world;  all  evil  comes  from  hate  and  unjust  distinc- 
tions among  men.  The  principle  of  love  will  abolish  this 
evil.  Perfect  love  of  man,  like  the  sun,  blesses  all.  Moh  Ti 
and  Yang  Chu,  a  contemporary  hedonist,  were  opposed  by 
Mencius,  whose  seven  chapters  couched  in  dialogues  sup- 
posed to  have  taken  place  between  Confucius  and  others, 
show  that  his  aim  was  the  good  of  the  realm,  which  might 
be  attained  by  wisdom,  humanity,  justice,  and  respectability, 
which  leads  to  piety,  care  of  the  dead,  and  loyalty.  Like 
Confucius,  Mencius  taught  that  man  was  good  by  nature  as 
opposed  to  the  view  openly  professed  by  others  that  man 
was  naturally  evil.  Mencius  adds  something  to  the  doctrine 
of  Confucius,  but  above  all  he  presents  his  views  with  a 
vigour  and  manliness  lacking  in  the  timid  statements  of  his 

1  Confucius  refers  to  his  disciples  as  seventy-seven  in  number. 
He  is  popularly  credited  with  having  had  three  thousand  disciples 
during  his  life-time,  of  whom  seventy-two  were  accounted  "wor- 
thy." 

-The  form  Mih  or  Mak  is  a  corruption  of  Moh  Ti  (Tih).  Like 
Mencius,  the  name  is  sometimes  Latinized  as  Micius. 


258  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

master,  and  it  is  as  a  man  rather  than  a  novel  thinker  that 
he  deserves  regard.  "  He  may  not  be  a  sage,  but  his  learn- 
ing has  reached  the  highest  point,"  said  his  countrymen. 
Confucius  believed,  but  scarcely  dared  to  say,  that  a  wicked 
king  should  be  ousted ;  Mencius  said  roundly  that  a  king  was 
of  no  importance  as  compared  with  the  people,  who  indeed 
are  the  judge:  "Heaven  hears  as  the  people  hear."  He 
dared  not  only  to  philosophize  but  to  stand  before  an  em- 
peror and  say,  "  If  a  king  has  faults,  the  nobles  should 
remonstrate  with  him  and,  if  he  will  not  listen,  they  ought  to 
put  another  king  in  his  place."  To  revolt  against  such  a 
king  is  not  revolution  but  "  raising  the  standard  of  right- 
eousness." As  between  him  and  Confucius,  the  latter  laid 
more  weight  upon  benevolence,  Mencius  upon  righteousness ; 
Confucius  thought  most  of  private  and  domestic  virtues; 
Mencius  allowed  for  human  nature  and  permitted  a  king  to 
be  self-indulgent  if  he  was  not  false  to  good  government. 
A  modern  tone  appears  in  his  teaching  that  to  be  made  vir- 
tuous the  people  must  be  fed  and  then  educated.1  Starving 
folk  cannot  be  virtuous ;  let  them  fill  their  bellies  and  when 
they  are  no  longer  hungry  they  will  educate  themselves,  be- 
come virtuous  of  themselves.  In  good  years  most  people 
are  good ;  in  bad  years  most  of  them  are  bad. 

In  maintaining  that  man  was  naturally  virtuous,  Mencius 
had  to  contend  not  only  with  those  who,  like  Siiin  K'uang, 
his  contemporary,  held  that  man  was  naturally  vicious,2  but 
with  those  who  argued  that  man  was  naturally  neither  one 
nor  the  other  but  indifferently  good  or  evil,  as  water  flows 
indifferently  east  or  west.  Mencius  replied  that  water  may 
do  this  but  it  will  not  flow  indifferently  up  or  down,  and 
asserted  that  man  has  within  himself  a  natural  principle  of 
righteousness  and  that  he  has  also  a  natural  principle  of 

1  This  is  in  direct  opposition  to  Lao-tse,  who  taught  that  the  more 
people  were  educated  the  worse  they  became. 

2  The  argument  here  is  that  man's  very  wish  to  become  virtuous 
proves  him  naturally  evil,  for  it  is  only  the  thin,  not  those  naturally 
fat,  who  wish  to  become  fat.     Man's  nature  is  due  to  association 
and  education,  which  alone  make  him  good  or  bad. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  259 

apprehending  mora*  truth.  Men  naturally  feel  distress  if 
they  see  a  child  faL  into  a  well ;  they  do  not  have  this  feeling 
because  they  expect  gain  or  have  argued  it  out.  Benevo- 
lence and  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  together  with 
righteousness  and  propriety,  are  like  man's  four  limbs. 
There  is  also  a  passion-nature,  but  this  is  lower  and  there 
is  a  restriction  in  exercising  the  senses;  the  higher  moral 
nature  is  chief;  passion-nature  is  subordinate  by  Heavenly 
appointment,1  and  the  greatest  man  is  he  who  "  does  not 
lose  his  child-heart."  This  means  apparently  that  he  pre- 
serves unimpaired  his  natural  goodness.  The  great  ques- 
tions of  Mencius's  time  were  ethical,  and  it  is  evident  that 
moral  problems  were  more  discussed  than  any  others.  As 
Mencius  himself  reports :  "  The  words  of  Yang  Chu  (the 
hedonist  and  pessimist)  and  of  Moh  fill  the  empire.  All  peo- 
ple have  adopted  the  views  of  one  or  the  other."  Mencius 
objects  to  both,  to  Yang,  because  his  principle,  "  each  for 
himself,"  ignores  loyalty,  and  to  Moh,  because  "  love  all 
equally  "  ignores  filial  piety,  which  ought  to  express  a  more 
than  equal  love.  Neither  of  these  doctrines  introduces  us 
to  a  new  religious  element.  The  universal  love  advocated 
by  Moh  is  not  based  on  a  spiritual  argument  but  on  prece- 
dents of  antiquity  and  the  economic  advantage  of  following 
them.  Moh  contends  that  universal  love  is  the  best  working 
rule  for  a  State  and  that,  if  people  will  not  feel  this  love, 
they  should  be  punished  till  they  do.  Yang  Chu  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  deserve  a  place  in  a  history  of  religion.  He  was  a 
brilliant  cynic  without  moral  basis,  inculcating  a  ruthless 
contempt  for  antiquity,  which  paved  the  way  to  the  stand 
taken  by  Shi-Huang-Ti  (the  "First  Emperor"),  who  de- 
stroyed Confucian  lore,  probably  because  its  key-note  was 
that  "  to  establish  a  kingdom  well  one  must  learn  the  lesson 
of  the  ancients,"  the  lesson,  namely,  that  tranquillity  and 
not  conquest  is  the  aim  of  a  good  king:  "  The  coat  of  mail 

1  Professor  Legge,  who  has  discussed  these  points  in  full  in  his 
Life  and  Works  of  Mencius,  London,  1889,  compares  this  with  the 
doctrine  of  Bishop  Butler's  Sermons  upon  Human  Nature. 


260  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  the  helmet  give  occasion  for  war,"  and  this  is  to  be 
avoided  (Shu-King). 

It  is  somewhat  remarkable  that  the  philosophy  of  Moh 
(Men  Ti)  was  regarded  by  the  Chinese  themselves  as  on  a 
par  with  that  of  Confucius.  The  two  sages  are  spoken  of 
by  later  authors  as  the  two  greatest  men  of  antiquity,  as  if 
for  some  centuries  Confucius  had  not  yet  attained  his  rank 
of  paramount  sage.  From  the  point  of  view  of  superstition, 
the  followers  of  Moh  -believed  in  ghosts  and  spirits,  adoring 
them  and  imploring  their  help,  while  they  neglected  the  cult 
of  ancestors.  During  the  Han  period,  beginning  206  B.  c., 
there  were  several  notable  Confucianists,  such  as  Yang 
Hiung,  while  side  by  side  with  Lao-tse  is  placed  Huang  Ti, 
who  is  even  called  the  father  of  Taoism.  Huai  Nan-tse, 
another  Taoist,  was  so  great  an  alchemist  that,  it  is  said,  he 
and  his  household,  including  his  dogs  and  poultry,  all  went 
to  heaven  and  became  immortal.  The  Taoist  Han  Fei-tse 
maintained  that  virtue  is  of  no  account  and  that  scholars 
are  parasites  or  destructive  grubs,  while  divination  is  de- 
spicable. Tung  Chung  Shu  (150  B.  c.)  invented  a  new  rain- 
sacrifice  and  distinguished  between  disposition,  due  to  Yang, 
and  feeling,  due  to  Yin,  the  former  being  naturally  good,  the 
latter  evil. 

Chuang-tse  (above),  the  second  great  disciple  of  Laotse, 
a  century  later  than  Lieh-tse,  enlarged  upon  the  cryptic  utter- 
ances of  his  master.  He  was  to  Lao-tse  what  Mencius  was 
to  Confucius.  From  Lao-tse  we  get  the  wisdom  of  apparent 
paradox : 

Ignorance  produces  wisdom.  Goodness  is  not  to  do  good. 
Weakness  is  stronger  than  strength.  Emptiness  is  fullness.  In- 
action is  more  active  than  action  (by  not-doing  all  is  done). 
Ruling  is  ruining.  Who  holds  by  force,  loses.  Who  subdues 
himself,  is  mighty.  Keep  out  and  you  will  get  in ;  keep  back  and 
you  will  be  advanced.  Who  is  content,  has  enough. 

Chuang  explains  Tao  in  more  comprehensible  language. 
"  The  greatest  politeness,  it  is  said,  is  to  show  no  special 
respect  to  others;  the  greatest  righteousness  is  to  take  no 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  261 

account  of  things;  the  greatest  wisdom  is  to  lay  no  plans; 
the  greatest  benevolence  is  to  make  no  show  of  affection; 
the  greatest  good  faith  is  to  give  no  pledge  of  sincerity. 
Repress  the  impulses  of  the  will;  unravel  the  errors  of  the 
mind ;  put  away  the  entanglements  to  virtue ;  and  clear  away 
all  that  obstructs  the  free  course  of  the  Tao.  Honours  and 
riches,  distinctions,  austerity,  fame  and  profit,  these  six  pro- 
duce the  impulses  of  the  will.  Personal  appearance  and 
deportment,  the  desire  of  beauty  and  subtle  reasonings,  ex- 
citement of  the  breath  and  cherished  thoughts,  these  six 
produce  errors  of  the  mind.  Hatred  and  longings,  joy  and 
anger,  grief  and  delight,  these  six  are  the  entanglements  to 
virtue.  Refusals  and  approachments,  receiving  and  giving, 
knowledge  and  ability,  these  six  obstruct  the  course  of  the 
Tao.  When  these  four  conditions,  with  the  six  causes  of 
each,  do  not  agitate  the  breast,  the  mind  is  correct,  and  being 
correct  it  is  still  and  pellucid ;  being  pellucid  it  is  free  from 
pre-occupation  and  thus  enters  the  state  of  inaction  in  which 
it  accomplishes  everything.  .  .  .  Subject  and  object  meet  in 
the  Tao  .  .  .  positive  and  negative  blend  in  the  infinite  One 
.  .  .  the  universe  and  I  are  one.  ...  If  man  loves  God  as 
his  father,  he  should  have  a  greater  love  for  that  which  is 
greater  than  God  "  (Tao). 

But  in  other  regards  Chuang  is  distinctly  an  innovator ;  nor 
is  he  entirely  consistent  with  himself,  for  he  says :  "  God 
is  the  Ultimate,  manifested  in  nature;  at  the  beginning  of  all 
things  God  was."  Lao-tse  is  a  mystic  but  he  mentions 
God 1  only  as  posterior  to  a  finite  principle ;  he  does  not 
teach  metempsychosis  nor  the  doctrine  of  illusion,  whereas 
Chuang  says :  "  When  the  real  awakening  comes  it  may  be 
that  life  will  be  found  to  have  been  a  dream,  Confucius  a 
dream,  I  myself  a  dream  —  or  is  the  dream  reality?  I 
dreamed  I  was  a  butterfly,  but  woke  and  found  that  it  was 
I ;  or  am  I  a  butterfly  who  dreams  that  it  is  Chuang  ?  What 

1  In  his  Tao-Teh-King  (if  it  is  his),  he  derives  being  from  not- 
being,  that  is  from  the  Absolute  to  be  described  only  by  negations 
(it  is  the  Unknowable). 


262  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

is?  What  seems?  And  yet  between'  butterfly  and  man 
some  barrier  exists;  a  change  of  form,  that  is  all."  It  is 
not  impossible,  though  improbable,  that  some  Brahmanistic 
thought  had  already  filtered  through  to  China,  as  Mr.  Lionel 
Giles  has  suggested.1 

The  China  of  Mencius  and  Chuang  was  no  longer  the 
China  of  Lao-tse  and  Confucius.  Foreign  elements  were 
appearing  in  the  state.  Changes  were  taking  place  even  in 
clothes  and  equipment  that  would  have  shocked  Confucius. 
Prime  ministers,  even  emperors,  were  half-breeds.  The 
emperor  who  died  in  425  B.  c.  was  not  only  half  Tartar  by 
birth  but  he  married  a  Tartar,  so  that  his  children  were  any- 
thing but  Chinese.  Wu-ling  (325-299  B.  c.)  introduced  the 
Tartar  dress  and  boots  and  cavalry  into  China.  And  along 
with  boots  and  war-horses  entered  demoralizing  ideas.  It 
was  a  time  of  political  and  intellectual  life.  Materialism, 
already  latent  in  the  doctrines  of  Confucius,  who  ignored 
all  spirituality,  was  now  not  only  recognized  but  proudly 
proclaimed  to  be  the  only  true  philosophy.  It  was  against 
this  materialism  that  Mencius  raised  his  voice.  He  could  no 
longer  cite  Confucius  as  an  authority;  to  many,  Confucius 
was  not  only  a  dream  but  a  nightmare.  By  only  a  few 
was  his  ipse  dixit  accepted  without  dispute.  All  opinions 
got  a  hearing  and  it  is  to  the  lasting  credit  of  the  Chinese 
that  in  the  long  run  the  optimist  and  moralist  prevailed 
against  the  pessimist  and  hedonist.  It  is  to  Mencius  that 
the  Chinese  owe  the  final  triumph  of  the  Confucian  view 
that  man  is  naturally  virtuous  and  that,  for  this  reason, 
righteousness  is  a  religious  aim.  Mencius  does  not  usually 
speak  of  God  (Shang  Ti)  but  of  T'ien  (Heaven)  ;  yet  once 
he  says :  "  Even  though  wicked,  man  may  sacrifice  to  Shang 
Ti,  if  he  fast  and  purify  himself." 

Mencius  was  one  of  a  number  of  brilliant  scholars  of  his 
age.  But  there  was  little  accomplished  for  Chinese  religion 
after  his  day  save  in  the  philosophy  of  religion  and  the  best 

1  Musings  of  a  Chinese  Mystic  in  Wisdom  of  the  East  series. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  263 

work  here  was  done  under  the  influence  of  Buddhism.  Tao- 
ism shows  a  steady  decline  to  the  unintelligent  hocus-pocus 
called  by  that  name  ever  since.  Imported  Buddhism  exerted 
for  certain  seasons  a  profound  influence  upon  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  more  educated  classes.  Philosophy  of  native 
sort  was  still  tinged  with  classicism,  but  in  so  far  as  it  di- 
verged from  this  was  at  its  best  in  a  sort  of  Epicureanism. 
This  system,  the  most  original  philosophical  system  of  China, 
was  a  materialistic  monism,  elaborated  in  thirty  books  and 
eighty-five  chapters  by  Wang  Ch'ung,  who  was  born  in  27 
A.  D.  and  died  circa  97.  Several  of  his  works  are  lost,  but 
his  Lung-Heng  or  philosophical  essays  survive.  He  is  an 
eclectic  philosopher,  an  admirer  of  Confucius-,  whom  he  yet 
criticizes  freely,  and  he  bases  his  principles  of  philosophy  on 
the  old  theory  of  the  Yang  and  Yin,  yet  not  as  leading  to  a 
dualistic  explanation  of  the  universe.  Both  the  heavenly 
and  earthly  "  fluids  "  are  material.  There  is  here  no  spir- 
itual correlate  to  the  Yang,  no  Tao,  and  no  supreme  Reason. 
All  natural  phenomena  are  explicable  from  natural  causes. 
Heaven  and  earth  were  originally  one  vapour,  as  is  taught 
by  the  old  philosophers,  who  say  that  the  Great  One  divided 
into  heaven  and  earth.  When  chaos  ended,  what  was  pure 
and  light  became  heaven ;  the  turbid  and  heavy  became  earth 
and  ocean.  The  mixture  of  their  fluids  produced  man. 
Air  and  fiery  ether  represent  Yang;  earth  and  water,  Yin. 
The  two  elements  are  therefore  male  fire  and  female  water, 
one  represented  by  sun,  stars,  and  spirit  or  mind,  the  other 
by  water  and  its  sediment  (earth)  and  body.  Heaven,  like 
earth,  does  all  things  spontaneously  and  without  volition; 
hears  no  prayers,  rewards  no  virtue,  does  not  live  like  a 
king  (as  God),  cannot  feel,  see,  or  hear.  When  the  Yang 
fluid  comes  forth  spontaneously,  plants  grow ;  when  it  ebbs 
and  Yin  increases,  they  wither  and  die.  Man's  soul  and 
mind  are  one  and  one  with  the  '*  fluid  of  heaven,  which  is 
inactive  consciously  but  active  unconsciously."  The  fu- 
sion of  the  male  fiery  and  female  watery  fluids,  heaven  and 
earth,  makes  man;  so  man  is  said  to  have  a  father  in  the 


264  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

sky;  but  in  reality  the  fluids  crystallize  together  to  make 
man ;  it  is  as  when,  so  to  speak,  ice  is  made ;  so  man  is  crys- 
tallized, and  melts  again  into  those  fluids ;  the  vital  spirit 
is  represented  by,  or  resides  during  life  in,  the  blood;  the 
body  represents  the  earth  fluid.  Ghosts  are  not  deceased 
beings  but  warm  airs,  parts  of  the  fiery  fluid  without  body. 
No  man  can  know  the  future  or  prolong  his  life.  Fate  is 
determined  by  the  amount  of  fiery  fluid  he  has  in  his  make- 
up ;  it  is  one  with  star-fluid,  so  astrologers  can  tell  about  it. 
Rain  comes  from  earth ;  it  is  not  a  gift  of  heaven.  Virtue 
is  an  excess  of  heavenly  fluid,  a  fluid  which  seems  to  tend  to 
virtue  (so  the  ancients  tell  us).  Man  is  not  naturally  good 
or  bad,  as  older  philosophers  argue ; 1  his  virtue  depends  on 
the  amount  of  his  heavenly  fluid. 

According  to  Wang  Ch'ung,  the  vital  fluid  (Yang)  em- 
braces the  five  elements,  water,  fire,  wood,  metal,  and  earth, 
which  form  the  five  organs,  heart,  liver,  stomach,  lungs,  and 
kidneys,  and  these  are  the  seats  of  the  five  virtues,  benevo- 
lence, justice,  propriety,  knowledge,  and  truth.  Interesting 
as  is  this  philosophy  in  its  denial  of  spiritual  life,  it  adds 
nothing  religiously  to  the  denials  of  former  centuries.  It  is 
rather  a  negation  of  religion  than  a  religious  form,  and  in  its 
dogma  that  the  heaven-fluid  possesses  truth  and  knowledge 
as  well  as  the  other  virtues,  it  is  not  very  logical.  These 
virtues,  however,  appear  only  in  the  "  hearts  of  the  sages," 
not  in  heaven  itself. 

In  the  eleventh  century,  under  Buddhistic  influence,  there 
arose  a  nature-philosophy,  Sing-Li,  propounded  by  Chou- 
Tun-i,  who  also  accepted  the  Yang  and  Yin  antithesis  but 
sought  to  discover  an  ultimate  principle  for  both.  His  dis- 
ciple, Chu  Hi  (1130-1200  A.D.),  besides  his  literary  activ- 
ities, occupied  himself  with  the  same  philosophical  problem 

1  Alfred  Forke,  Lun-Heng  (Leipzig,  1907)  ;  he  has  compared  at 
length  Lucretius,  v.  439-449;  485-493,  etc.,  and  the  parallel  in  the 
materialistic  Carvaka  of  India.  See  also  the  same  writer's  essays 
on  Yang  Chu  and  the  Chinese  sophists  in  the  Journal  of  the  Peking 
Oriental  Society,  vii,  and  of  the  China  Branch  of  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society,  xxxiv. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  265 

and  solved  it  by  making  the  Ultimate,  which  to  Chou-Tun-i 
was  either  active  or  passive,  as  Yang  and  Yin,  an  incor- 
poreal intelligence  or  supreme  Reason,  Li,  immanent  in  the 
universe,  but  having  matter  coeval  beside  it.  Soul,  con- 
scious existence  after  death,  and  a  personal  God  are  denied, 
though  Chu  Hi  used  the  word  God,  probably  by  a  figure  of 
speech  ("  God  raises  up  the  hero  to  overcome  the  calamities 
which  God  sends  down  ").  Since  there  is  in  this  Neo-Con- 
fucianism,  which  was  influential  in  Japan,1  a  rational  prin- 
ciple in  all  things  and  this  is  moral  (moral  ideas  are  qualities 
of  the  Ultimate),  the  system  forms  a  religion  of  a  sort, 
though  not  wholly  native,  for  all  metaphysical  religious  ideas 
of  this  period  are  affected  by  the  speculations  of  Buddhism. 
Taoism  was  for  centuries  the  accepted  religion  of  China. 
But  Lao's  Taoism  had  degenerated  into  a  search  for  the 
elixir  of  life  and  the  philosopher's  stone;  even  in  life  one 
may  acquire  Tao.  Beguiled  by  the  hope  of  these  valuables 
many  emperors  gave  protection  and  encouragement  to  the 
Taoist  doctors  who  practised  alchemy  and  preached  doc- 
trines which  they  claimed  were  derived  from  Lao-tse,  to 
whom  sacrifice  was  made  in  the  second  century  of  our  era. 
Even  as  early  as  the  third  century  B.  c.  the  "  First  Em- 
peror "  (246-210  B.  c.)  fitted  out  a  naval  expedition  to  find 
the  land  of  perpetual  youth  and  discover  its  secrets.  At  that 
time  the  Taoist  magicians  already  professed  ability  to  live 
like  gods,  see  into  the  future,  rule  natural  forces,  etc.  Wu 
Ti,  an  emperor  of  the  first  century  B.  c.,  became  the  intel- 
lectual slave  of  these  charlatans.  Soon  after  this  Buddhism 
began  to  influence  Taoism,2  which  in  the  fourth  century  A.  D. 
invented  or  borrowed  new  gods  and  in  course  of  time 

1  Known  there  as  Shushi ;  it  was  complemented  by  the  Neo-Con- 
fucian  School  of  Wang-Yang-Min  (1472-1528).     Neo-Confucianism 
was  a  synthesis  of  Buddhism  and  Confucianism. 

2  Buddhism  may  even  have  affected  the  Shu  King  (as  it  now  is). 
Compare  in  this  work :     "  Put  away  all  selfishness   and  then  you 
may  say  '  I  have  accumulated  merit.' "    The  same  King  says  that 
"  Crimes  are  registered  above,"  but  does  not  explain  how ;  probably 
only  in  the  "  mind  of  God  "  at  that  period. 


266  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

adopted  from  the  Buddhists  the  doctrine  of  future  punish- 
ments and  imitated  its  external  features,  idols,  temples,  and 
monasteries.  Fa-Hien  in  399  A.  D.  made  a  pilgrimage  to 
India  and  brought  back  Buddhist  texts.  The  first  Taoist 
pope,  imitated  from  Buddhism,  was  Chang  Tao-ling,  said 
to  have  been  born  in  34  A.  D.,  who  discovered  the  secret  of 
longevity  and  at  the  age  of  sixty  "  made  a  pill,  swallowed 
it,  and  became  younger  than  ever."  It  was  he  who,  still 
youthful  in  the  second  century,  founded  a  semi-clerical  State 
with  a  religious  discipline  based  on  self-humiliation  before 
the  higher  powers  and  on  confession  of  sins. 

It  may  well  have  been  that  then  as  now  there  were  sin- 
cere seekers  of  truth  as  well  as  seekers  of  life-elixirs  among 
the  Taoist  recluses  who  withdrew  to  the  solitudes  to  practise 
piety  and  soul-strength  by  means  of  silence  and  breath- 
exercises.  Some  of  them  resemble  the  Yogins  of  India. 
But  in  general  they  practised  magic  not  meditation.  Just 
how  far  back  or  how  deep  was  the  influence  of  the  Bud- 
dhism which  made  such  headway  in  the  centuries  following 
the  Christian  era,  it  is  difficult  to  say.  Legend  says  that  a 
statue  of  Buddha  was  brought  to  the  capital  122  B.  c.  and 
that  missionaries  arrived  67  A.  D.  At  any  rate,  missionaries 
came  in  147  A.  D.  and  by  the  fourth  century  A.  D.  the  ritualism 
of  Buddhism  had  made  a  lasting  appeal  to  the  common  peo- 
ple. The  religion  itself,  its  spiritual  hope  and  sentimental 
tone,  contrasted  favourably  with  the  formality  of  Confucian- 
ism and  with  the  mysticism  of  Taoism.  But  the  fortunes  of 
both  sects  varied  with  court  favour.  Confucianism  flourished 
side  by  side  with  Buddhism  in  the  fourth  century,  when 
monasteries  began  to  be  established.  Under  the  Eastern 
Tsin  dynasty  Buddhism  largely  prevailed  (till  420  A.  D.). 
Persecution  followed,  but  in  502  A.  D.  the  emperor  Wu  Ti 
was  so  devoted  to  this  religion  that,  like  the  later  Japanese 
rulers,  he  gave  up  a  throne  to  enter  a  monastery.  Hundreds 
of  Buddhist  works  were  imported  in  the  sixth  century  and 
Taoists  who  would  not  worship  Buddha  were  slain.  Later, 
both  Taoists  and  Buddhists  became  disliked,  partly  because 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  267 

of  the  quackery  of  the  one  and  the  evil  behaviour  of  the 
other  sect,  whose  nuns  were  not  very  exemplary;  though 
again  in  the  seventh  century,  when  Hiuen-tsang  went  to 
India  to  procure  Buddhist  works,  Buddhism  flourished 
alongside  of  Taoism.  At  this  time  Lao-tse  was  formally 
canonized  and  his  supposed  works  were  made  part  of  the 
State  examination,  while  both  Taoists  and  Buddhists  were 
permitted  to  become  State  officials,  and  even  the  Nestorians 
were  received  at  court  and  a  church  was  built  for  them. 
T'ai-tsung  not  only  received  them  and  heard  their  doctrines, 
but  he  had  some  of  the  sacred  books  of  the  Christians  trans- 
lated for  the  State  examination.  Finally,  however,  in  the 
ninth  century,  after  the  Buddhists  had  been  persecuted  by 
the  Confucianists  in  the  eighth  century,  the  Taoists,  who 
at  that  time  had  been  undergoing  a  new  sentence  of  banish- 
ment, were  again  tecalled,  and  succeeded  in  having  not  only 
the  Buddhists  but  all  other  foreigners  put  under  the  ban  as 
irreligious  teachers.  All  Buddhist  establishments,  more  than 
fifty  thousand,  were  broken  up  and  the  Buddhists,  Mani- 
chaeans,  and  Nestorians  were  "  sent  to  their  own  lands." 
After  this,  though  the  Buddhists  were  again  tolerated,  the 
Taoists  had  no  rivals  save  the  Confucianists  till  the  Mongols 
began  to  favour  Lamaism.  Marriage  was  practised  by  the 
Taoist  priests  till  the  time  of  the  Sung  (960-1127),  but  the 
Taoists  were  otherwise  favoured  by  this  dynasty  x  and  for 
that  reason  were  obnoxious  to  the  conquerors  of  the  Sung; 
but  they  became  powerful  again  in  the  fourteenth  century 
under  the  Yuan  Mongols;  and  the  Ming  dynasty  (1368- 
1643)  at  least  treated  them  with  consideration,  though 
forcing  them  to  pass  examination  in  the  Confucian  classics 
if  they  wished  to  enter  public  life.  In  the  next  century, 
however,  they  were  regarded  as  imposters  by  the  emperor 

1  The  first  Sung  emperor  opposed  the  Buddhists,  but  contem- 
porary rulers  favoured  them  and  began  to  build  at  this  time  pagodas 
to  preserve  relics  of  Buddha.  A  few  of  these  edifices  had  been 
built  previously,  but  most  of  the  existing  pagodas  date  from  the 
tenth  century.  Kublai  Khan,  the  first  Mongol  emperor,  was  strongly 
attached  to  Buddhism. 


268  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  were  literally  laughed  out  of  court.     Later  Ming  em- 
perors even  treated  them  as  heretics. 

It  is  from  this  later  period,  perhaps  from  the  sixteenth 
century,  that  we  have  the  chief  Taoist  literature  of  today, 
the  Book  of  Rewards  and  Punishments  and  the  Book  of 
Secret  Blessings.  The  former  reckons  out  how  many  years 
are  to  be  deducted  from  a  man's  life  for  every  fault,  twelve 
years  down  to  a  hundred  days,  according  to  its  magnitude, 
and  embodies  the  ethical  code,  to  practise  which  leads  to 
quiescence  on  the  part  of  "  recorders  of  crime,"  as  certain 
spirits  are  called.  The  rules  of  this  code  are  partly  moral, 
partly  practical;  on  the  whole  their  ethical  quality  is  unim- 
peachable. Thus,  from  the  first  of  these  books : 

Thou  shalt  not  steal ;  thou  shalt  not  break  up  marriages ;  thou 
shalt  not  kill  for  gain ;  thou  shalt  not  envy,  nor  covet ;  nor  suck 
the  brains  of  others;  nor  injure  living  things,  except  as  enjoined 
for  sacrifice ;  thou  shalt  not  destroy  men's  tools ;  nor  open  flood- 
gates, nor  laugh  at  deformity;  nor  bury  an  effigy  to  inflict  an 
incubus  upon  a  man;  thou  shalt  not  murmur  against  Heaven, 
nor  against  rain,  nor  against  wind;  nor  give  alms  and  then 
regret  it.  Honour  thy  parents;  wives,  respect  your  husbands; 
women,  be  gentle  and  obedient.  Man,  do  not  rage  on  the  first 
day  of  the  month;  nor  dance  and  sing  on  the  last  day  of  the 
month  or  year ; x  do  not  weep  or  spit  toward  shooting  stars  nor 
toward  the  north  pole  (which  is  the  door  of  heaven),  nor  point 
out  a  rainbow;  be  virtuous,  humane  to  animals;  pity  widows 
and  orphans  and  all  those  who  are  unfortunate;  rejoice  with 
them  that  rejoice;  help  the  needy;  do  not  boast;  do  not  swear 
to  thy  innocence  before  the  gods,  nor  give  bad  food  to  the 
people,  nor  love  wine  and  dissipation;  live  with  thy  wife  in 
harmony  and  do  not  dispute  angrily  with  those  near  akin. 

The  most  popular  moral  or  religious  book  with  all  sects 
in  China  is  the  somewhat  similar  Book  of  Secret  Blessings. 
With  injunctions  like  those  above  as  to  honouring  parents, 
helping  the  needy,  saving  those  in  danger,  feeding  the  hun- 

1  Because  the  hearth-spirit  ascends  to  heaven  to  register  man's 
faults  and  good  deeds  on  the  last  day  of  every  month  and  the  spirits 
of  Heaven  and  Earth  examine  the  virtues  and  sins  of  each  on  the 
last  day  of  the  year,  with  a  view  to  rewards  and  penalties. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  269 

gry,  etc.,  it  lays  especial  weight  on  kindness  to  animals : 
"  Abstain  from  shedding  blood ;  do  not  tread  upon  insects 
on  the  path;  burn  a  candle  in  your  window  to  give  light  to 
the  traveller;  do  not  spread  nets  to  catch  birds,  nor  poison 
fish  and  reptiles."  It  also  inculcates  the  rule  of  devoting 
one's  wealth  to  the  good  of  one's  fellow -men ;  of  loving  good 
and  fleeing  from  evil ;  of  charity  toward  all. 

How  much  the  Taoist  pantheon  has  inherited  from  remot- 
est antiquity  and  how  much  invented  or  borrowed  is  difficult 
to  say.  The  Taoists  regard  the  stars  as  divine  beings,  espe- 
cially the  Great  Bear,  and  generally  deify  natural  phenom- 
ena such  as  thunder,  lightning,  and  ocean.  They  worship 
dragons,  who  cause  rain  and  convulsions  of  nature.  They 
have  also,  as  already  noticed,  deified  men  as  patron  gods  of 
occupation,  a  god  of  scholars,  a  god  of  soldiers,  etc.,  who 
lived  and  died  as  common  mortals  hundreds  of  years  ago. 
Some  spirits  grant  riches,  others  old  age,  happiness,  etc. 
Stars  in  the  Great  Bear  are  especially  honoured;  all  stars 
are  divine,  sublimated  essences  of  things.  The  planets  rep- 
resent the  five  elements,  fire,  water,  earth,  wood,  and  metal. 
Jupiter,  owing  to  its  long  cycle,  is  revered  by  astrologers. 
The  Taoist  religion  today  is  a  State-religion  and  the  third 
section  of  the  sacrifices,  which  contains  many  Taoist  ele- 
ments, is  a  reflection  both  of  old  Sinic  divinities  and  of  the 
more  modern  cult  of  "  benefactors  "  and  stars.1  Genii  and 
demons  swarm  everywhere.  They  bring  reports  to  heaven 
of  man's  acts  below.  They  pluck  a  man  in  examinations  or 

1  The  "  third  section  "  of  spirits  contains  twelve  sorts  of  deities  to 
whom  sacrifice  must  be  offered  at  least  once  a  year :  Physicians  of 
the  past;  Kuan  Ti,  the  War-god;  Wang  Ch'ung,  a  star,  once  a  man, 
as  god  of  scholars;  the  North  Pole,  as  throne  of  Heaven;  the 
Ruler  of  Fire;  Cannon  gods,  worshipped  by  the  military;  gods  of 
walls  and  moats ;  the  god  of  the  Eastern  Mountain  Summit  (his 
temple  is  north  of  the  altar  of  the  sun;  eighty-six  mountains  in  all 
receive  sacrifice)  ;  the  four  dragons ;  the  female  divinity  of  naviga- 
tion, together  with  male  river  gods ;  gods  of  the  soil,  together  with 
the  god  of  architecture ;  and  gods  of  storehouses.  Imaginary  spirits 
are  the  Unicorn,  Phoenix,  and  Dragon,  portentous  apparitions,  wor- 
shipped to  get  sons,  rain,  etc. 


270  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

pluck  out  his  eyes  or  cause  eclipse  and  pestilence.  Some 
of  these  are  new  in  form  but  the  idea  is  old.  Borrowed 
from  Confucianism,  a  rival  of  God  (Shang-Ti),  is  Yii- 
Huang-Shang-Ti  as  Supreme  Lord  or  (as  some  say)  next  in 
power  to  the  Three  Holy  Ones,  a  triad  borrowed  from  Bud- 
dhism and  arbitrarily  interpreted  as  Lao,  the  father  of  the 
race,  and  the  cosmic  principle.1  There  is  also  another  triad 
called  San  Kuan,  which  makes  a  trinity  of  "  three  rulers  " 
(of  heaven,  earth,  and  water).  The  Buddhistic  Avalokitesh- 
vara  was  still  portrayed  as  a  young  man  with  a  moustache  in 
the  eighth  century ;  he  is  now  sometimes  male  and  sometimes 
a  goddess  called  Kuan-yin  (goddess  of  mercy).  Buddha 
himself  has  become  "  Mother  Buddha  "  (in  Wu-tai).  The 
god  of  future  punishment  is  Yen-lo-wang;  he  is  said  to  be 
the  Hindu  Yama.2 

The  Taoists  have  developed  both  astrology  and  the  sci- 
ence of  prognostication.  They  draw  auguries  from  obser- 
vation of  all  the  changes  of  nature.  Phenomena  of  this  sort 
are  carefully  mentioned  in  the  Li-Ki  and  their  interpreta- 
tion was  made  a  science  during  the  Han  dynasty.  All  of- 
ficials have  orders  to  observe  and  report  extraordinary  phe- 
nomena, colour  of  sky,  storm,  eclipse,  rainbow,  heat,  and 
rain  (some  stars  influence  wind;  some  influence  rain). 
Gales  and  earthquakes  are  recorded  as  auguries,  also  all 
monstrosities,  unnatural  births,  etc.  A  hen  with  three  legs, 
for  example,  indicates  that  there  will  be  undue  female  influ- 
ence about  the  throne.  Cases  of  resurrection  are  reported 
as  omens.  Chance  "  words  of  boys  "  are  oracular ;  beasts 
and  birds,  above  all  "  wind  and  water,"  Feng  Shui,  or  Ti 
Li  (geomancy)  are  means  employed  to  this  end.  Feng  Shui 
is  a  science  by  itself;  no  house,  no  grave,  no  business,  can 

1  See  Legge,  Religions  of  China,  London,  1880,  p.  i67f.    The  or- 
iginal three  are  the  Three  Jewels  (Triratna). 

2  The    ignorant    Buddhists    of    China    worship    Fuh    and    Poosa 
(Buddha  and  Bodhisattva)    as  God,  the  latter  being  "more   sym- 
pathetic," the  former  higher  in  rank.     Poosa  is  virtually  God  to  the 
lower  classes,  but  Kuan- Yin  sometimes  replaces  him.     Edkins,  op. 
cit.,  p.  Q7f.     Compare  Kuannon  in  Japan,  below,  p.  299. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  271 

be  begun  without  it.  Even  those  not  Taoists  do  not  dare  to 
act  without  a  Feng  Shui  magician. 

Such  is  the  popular  religion  of  today.  Officially,  both 
Taoism  and  Confucianism  are  State  religions,  but  while  the 
latter  is  the  religion  of  the  learned,  the  former  is  both  the 
real  religion  of  the  mass  of  the  people  and  the  religion  with- 
out which  even  the  learned  cannot  get  along.  But  Confu- 
cianism alone  has  the  influence  imparted  by  the  possession 
of  a  literature  which  is  virtually  holy  writ.  Taoists  have 
no  intellectual  standing.  The  Buddhists,  like  the  Taoists, 
get  their  adherents  only  from  the  uneducated.  Even  the 
Taoists  and  Buddhists  themselves  are  said  to  reject  all 
teachings  which  (they  think)  are  inconsistent  with  Confu- 
cianism. "  Ever  since  631  A.  D.,  when  the  Confucian  classics 
became  the  sole  subjects  for  competitive  examination,  they 
have  been  the  main  study  of  every  generation.  ...  By  all 
who  are  educated,  Confucius,  the  Perfect  Sage  and  Throne- 
less  King,  is  worshipped  as  a  god."  * 

In  reviewing  Chinese  religion,  it  is  obvious  that  after 
Buddhistic  influence  begins  we  are  dealing  with  a  mixed 
creed  and  cult  and  in  estimating  the  Chinese  for  themselves 
we  must  judge  them  before  Dharmaraksha  and  Kashyapa 
fulfilled  the  dream  of  the  white  horse  and  its  rider.2  It  is 
to  the  Buddhists  that  the  Chinese  owe  their  introduction  to 
religious  philosophy.  Before  the  advent  of  Buddhist  sects 
we  have  much  ethics  and  a  little  metaphysics,  but  no  pro- 
found philosophy  of  religion  until  Bodhidharma,  in  apostolic 
succession  from  Buddha,  laid  the  foundation  of  the  Zen 
school  of  religious  Contemplation.  This  and  other  Buddhist 
sects,  of  China  and  Japan,  will  be  more  conveniently 

1  Douglas,  Confucianism  and  Taoism,  London,  1887.     By  the  Con- 
fucian classics  is  meant  here  (as  often)  not  the  classics  as  Shu.  in 
distinction  from  the  Canon,  but,  in  general,  the  nine  books   (£ive 
King  and  Four  Shu)  of  canonical  authority  (see  p.  224). 

2  Arthur  Lloyd  in  his  Creed  of  Half  Japan,  London,  1911,  com- 
pares Rev.  vi.  2,  composed,  he  says,  a  year  after  the  Chinese  emperor 
saw  the  vision    (of   Buddhist   invasion)    fulfilled   in  67   A.  D.     The 
future  Avatar  of  Vishnu,  for  that  matter,  will  also  appear  riding 
on  a  white  horse ! 


272  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

treated  together  under  Japanese  religion  (below).1  It  re- 
mains to  inquire  whether  other  religions  affected  the  Chi- 
nese. Babylonian  influence  of  the  unknown  past  may  be 
rejected  as  too  hypothetical  to  be  probable.  Tartar  influ- 
ence probably  added  little;  it  adversely  affected  pure  Chi- 
nese thought.  Mohammedanism  and  Mazdaism  both 
reached  China  in  the  seventh  century.  The  former  is  still 
represented  by  a  local  body  of  believers  but  neither  of  these 
religions  of  themselves  made  any  real  impression  upon  the 
Chinese  people.  Manichaean  beliefs  entered  China  without 
any  lasting  effect  in  the  ninth  century.  Jewish  teaching  is 
said  to  have  reached  China  during  the  Han  period  and  in 
the  twelfth  century;  a  small  Jewish  colony  (largely  Mo- 
hammedan) is  still  to  be  found  at  Kaifungfu.2 

The  Nestorian  Christians,  whom  we  have  seen  strongly 
entrenched  under  imperial  favour  in  the  seventh  century, 
appear  to  have  left  not  only  a  famous  monument 3  but  many 
disciples,  who  under  subsequent  persecution  became  absorbed 
either  into  Mohammedanism  or  into  the  secret  society  known 
as  the  Religion  of  Immortality  (literally  "the  pill  of  immor- 
tality"). They  believe  in  a  "  Teacher  from  above,"  who 
was  reported  to  have  lived  on  earth  seven  centuries  before 
(i.e.  before  755  A.  D.).  As  early  as  the  third  century  Barde- 
sanes  reports  Christians  in  China.  A  few  Japanese  cult- 
words,  like  ansoko  for  incense,  are  of  western  (Parthian) 
origin.  Eating  of  meat  and  marriage  of  priests  may  be  due 
to  Christian  example.  Some  knowledge  of  Christianity  may 
have  come  into  China  before  the  seventh  century,  but  if  so  it 
was  probably  without  much  effect.  What  is  highly  prob- 

1  The  tenets  but  not  the  sects  themselves  were  transmitted  to  Japan 
in  the  case  of  the  Bidon,  Nehan,  Chiron,  and  Spron  sects. 

2  Some   of  the  modern   sects   called   Buddhist  are   really  Taoist 
mixed  with  other  elements.     The  "  Bread  and  Tea  "  sect,  for  exam- 
ple is  a  form  of  Wu-Wei  (Do-nothing).    It  embraces  a  number  of 
sincere  opposers  of  idolatry  who  as  vegetarians  offer  the  gods  only 
tea  and  bread.    They  worship  Heaven  and  Earth,  the  emperor  and 
the  religious  teacher. 

8  Saeki,  The  Nestorian  Monument  in  China,  London,  1916. 


RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  II  273 

able,  however,  is  that  the  persecution  of  Wu-tsung  in  845 
(like  that  of  Timur,  in  the  fourteenth  century)  drove  into 
hiding  the  two  thousand  foreign  missionaries  then  living  in 
China,  many  of  whom  were  Christian.  Before  this  per- 
secution the  Nestorians  may  have  affected  the  Chinese 
Buddhist  sects,  as  they  would  by  then  have  affected 
Japanese  scholars,  who  were  studying  in  China  in  the  same 
eighth  century.1  Yet  it  is  easy  to  exaggerate  the  im- 
portance of  this  supposititious  influence.  Chinese  and  Japa- 
nese analogues  to  Christian  teaching  are  quite  explicable 
without  recourse  to  the  hypothesis  that  they  were  bor- 
rowed. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Chinese  Classics,  translated  by  J.  Legge,  in  the  Sacred  Books 
of  the  East,  Confucian  texts,  iii,  xvi,  xxvii,  xxviii ;  Taoistic, 
xxxix,  xl. 

S.  Wells  Williams,  A  History  of  China,  New  York,  1901. 

Friedrich  Hirth,  The  Ancient  History  of  China,  New  York, 
1908. 

J.  J.  M.  De  Groot,  The  Religious  System  of  China,  Leyden, 
1872-1910;  The  Religion  of  the  Chinese,  New  York,  1910. 

James  Legge,  The  Religions  of  China,  London,  1880;  The  Life 
and  Work  of  Mencius,  London,  1889. 

Herbert  A.  Giles,  Religions  of  Ancient  China,  London,  1905; 
Chuang-Tsu,  Mystic,  Moralist,  and  Social  Reformer,  Lon- 
don, 1889. 

J.  Edkins,  Religion  in  China,  London,  1878.  Brief  account  of 
the  three  religions. 

W.  E.  Soothill,  The  Three  Religions  of  China,  London,  1913. 

R.  K.  Douglas,  Confucianism  and  Taoism,  London,  1887. 

M.  M.  Dawson,  The  Ethics  of  Confucianism,  New  York,  1915. 

E.  J.  Eitel,  Handbook  for  the  Student  of  Chinese  Buddhism, 
Hongkong,  1870. 

1  The  great  Chinese  empire  of  the  first  century  of  our  era  gave 
opportunity  to  come  in  contact  with  the  far  West,  which  an  em- 
bassy of  120  B.  c.  had  already  made  known.  This  embassy  notes  the 
use  of  stamped  silver  coins  and  horizontal  writing  in  Judea  and 
Persia.  The  Nestorian  monument,  originally  unveiled  in  781,  was 
found  in  1625.  It  mentions  the  fact  that  the  Virgin  was  born  in 
Ta  Ch'in  (Judea). 


274  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

A.  Forke,  Lun-Heng,  Philosophical  Essays  of  Wang  Ch'ung, 

Leipzig,  1907-11. 
On  Yang  Chu  and  Mih,  see  Journal  Peking  Oriental  Society, 

Hi.  3,  203. 
P.  Y.  Saeki,  The  Nestorian  Monument  in  China,  London,  1916. 


CHAPTER  SIXTEEN 

RELIGIONS   OF   JAPAN 
SHINTOISM   AND   BUDDHISM 

THE  present  inhabitants  of  Japan  (Nippon,  "  Sunriseland," 
from  the  Chinese  "  Chipangu  ")  are  in  part  racially  allied 
with  the  Chinese,  being  of  Mongolian  origin,  possibly  from 
two  branches  of  that  race.  But  the  earliest  religion  is  more 
akin  to  that  of  the  Malay  race.  In  both  there  is  the  same 
fanciful  deification  of  nature.  There  is  a  superficial  re- 
semblance to  the  cult  of  the  Ainus.  The  two  peoples,  to- 
gether with  certain  troglodytes,  were  in  the  same  localities 
for  centuries,  and  though  the  Ainu  are  apparently  of  differ- 
ent stock  and  were  antagonistic  to  the  invading  Japanese, 
they  shared  many  religious  traits  with  the  latter,  as  indeed 
would  be  indicated  by  their  common  use  of  the  Kamui  rods, 
probably  because  they  were  originally  on  about  the  same 
plane  of  culture.1 

Our  first  knowledge  of  old  Japan,  its  culture,  myths,  and 
religion,  is  derived  from  two  sets  of  official  documents,  writ- 
ten in  Japanese  and  Chinese,  and  dating  from  712  and  720 
A.  D.,  respectively,  called  Kojiki  (Records)  and  Chronicles 
(Nihongi).  They  were  written  for  the  purpose  of  preserv- 
ing tradition  but  with  a  distinct  tendency  to  inculcate  the 

1When  we  first  hear  of  the  Japanese  they  were  still  emerging 
from  the  stone  age,  using  both  metal  and  stone  weapons,  being  in 
part  hunters  and  fishermen  and  in  part  agriculturists.  They  raised 
rice,  barley,  millet,  and  beans;  used  horses  only  for  riding,  had  no 
architecture,  no  vehicles,  no  cattle,  no  cotton,  and  no  sake  or  tea. 
Their  first  notion  of  writing  was  derived,  probably  in  the  third  cen- 
tury A.  D.,  from  Korea,  that  is,  eventually,  from  the  Chinese,  to 
whom  the  Japanese  owe  the  beginning  of  higher  culture.  For  the 
Ainus,  see  p.  46f. 

275 


276  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

divine  nature  of  the  imperial  house,  and  they  are  affected  by 
Chinese  influence  throughout.  As  history  they  have  no 
more  value  than  the  Hindu  Puranas,  which  were  written 
about  the  same  time,  or  the  Chinese  Shu  King,  which  also 
combines  myth  and  tradition  with  useful  implicit  teaching, 
but  their  general  contents  is  valuable  since  they  preserve  old 
tales  which  reflect  popular  belief.  The  later  of  these  works 
first  recognized  prayers  directed  to  the  ancestors  of  the  em- 
perors, who,  according  to  the  tradition  established  by  these 
histories,  are  descendants  of  the  "  heavenly  king  "  Jimmu 
(Tenno),  the  great-grandson  of  Ninigi,  reputed  grandson  of 
the  sun-deity.  The  date  of  Jimmu  is  traditionally  660  B.  c. 
There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  this  is  correct ;  but  it  an- 
swers the  same  purpose  as  the  assignment  of  the  foundation 
of  Rome  to  the  year  753  B.  c.  The  date  of  the  empress 
Jingo,  the  warlike  queen  who,  in  the  course  of  her  long  life 
of  a  hundred  years,  "  conquered  Korea,"  is  traditionally 
about  200  A.  D.  Her  son  Ojin,  who  was  afterwards  deified 
as  "  god  of  war  "  under  the  name  Hachiman,  is  said  to  have 
died  in  310  A.  D.  But  the  earliest  certain  date  in  Japanese 
history  is  461  A.  D. 

The  religion  of  this  early  period  had  at  first  no  name. 
There  was  no  need  of  a  designation  until  it  became  neces- 
sary to  distinguish  it  from  the  other  religions  which  soon 
submerged  its  primitive  character.  It  was  then  called  by  a 
Chinese  name  Shen-tao,  "  Way  of  the  Spirits,"  or  in  Japa- 
nese Shinto,  afterwards  translated  by  Kami  no  michi,  "  Way 
of  the  Superior"  (powers).  The  native  histories  do  not 
pretend  that  this  religion  was  inspired  or  revealed.  The 
complete  system  of  Chinese  ethics  was  brought  into  Japan 
at  an  early  date,  perhaps  the  fifth  century  A.  D.  Its  special 
religious  effect  was  to  emphasize  ancestor  worship,  which 
at  this  early  time  was  thus  made  a  part  of  the  official  Shinto 
cult. 

In  its  more  original  form  Shinto  has  no  cult  of  ancestors. 
Such  a  cult  depends  on  the  realization  of  the  family,  the 
preservation  of  family  names,  and  the  belief  in  a  continued 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  277 

existence  hereafter  of  one's  ancestors  as  powers  capable 
of  affecting  the  welfare  of  the  living.  Of  all  this  there  is  no 
trace  in  primitive  Shinto.1 

The  belief  in  regard  to  the  soul  and  ancestor  seems  to 
have  been  that  found  in  many  other  cases  of  parallel  cul- 
ture. The  fact  that  the  Mikado  is  divine  as  descendant  of 
the  Sun  does  not  show  that  common  people  may  boast  of 
this  descent,  and  so  the  fact  that  Mikados  and  other  great 
men,  scholars,  kings,  and  heroes,  live  revered  hereafter  does 
not  show  that  common  people  live  after  death,  still  less  that 
they  are  worshipped.  The  Polynesians,  the  Africans,  and 
even  the  Eskimos  made  a  distinction  between  such  people 
as  had  a  future  life  and  such  as  had  none.  Shinto,  till  in- 
fluenced by  Buddhism  and  Confucianism,  seems  to  be  quite 
inarticulate  regarding  the  future.  There  was  certainly  no 
heaven  or  hell  for  the  vulgar  mass  to  go  to ;  they  were  imag- 
ined as  living  underground  for  a  time  and  food  was  given 
to  them  to  prevent  their  being  angry  and  becoming  spiteful 
demons;  but  there  is  no  indication  that  this  implied  a  cult 
of  ancestors  or  that  the  ancestors  were  thought  to  remain 
alive  as  potent  spirits.  Probably  there  was  no  thought 
about  them  at  all.  Many  people  in  a  primitive  state  trouble 
themselves  not  in  the  least  as  to  a  hereafter  and  have  no 
fixed  notion  as  to  whether  they  will  live  long  beyond  the 
grave  or  not.  The  Japanese  conception  of  spirit  is  itself 
faint.  As  is  seen  in  the  legends,  the  early  Kami  are  powers 
as  phenomena,  and  so  with  human  beings,  when  the  living 
phenomenon  passed  the  man  passed.  As  is  said  of  the  amor- 
phous first  gods,  "  they  had  these  names  and  died."  Distin- 
guished people  may  have  two  souls,  a  rough  and  a  gentle 
soul,  and  they  may  continue  to  exist ;  but  the  vulgar  go  down 
to  the  earth  and  perish,  unless  perhaps  they  appear  as  birds 
or  snakes  and  so  continue  a  fresh  phenomenal  life,  but  even 

1  Most  Japanese  scholars  and  some  Europeans,  misled  by  the  later 
faith,  teach  that  Shinto  was  from  the  beginning  "  pure  ancestor  wor- 
ship." Saito  in  his  useful  History  of  Japan  in  China,  London,  1912, 
p.  26,  even  translates  Kami  by  "ancestors." 


278  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

this  is  an  unusual  occurrence.  The  soul-idea  (tamashii, 
"ball  of  wind")  is  connected  primarily  with  breath;  death 
was  called  "  breath-departure,"  and  soul  was  "  wind-ball." 
There  are  no  prayers  for  the  welfare  of  the  dead;  they  are 
not  invoked.  Human  sacrifice  made  at  the  tomb  of  royal 
persons  has  sometimes  been  cited  in  support  of  the  "  pure 
ancestor  worship  "  of  Shinto.  But  on  the  contrary,  this 
custom,  which  is  found  in  other  lands  in  exactly  parallel 
circumstances,  proves  only  that  the  extraordinary  people 
thus  honoured  were  supposed  to  retain  their  royal  state 
hereafter,  and  as  they  were  all  divine  beings  by  virtue  of 
their  descent  from  the  Sun,  the  practice  indicates  merely 
that  royal  persons  were  divine  enough  to  survive.  The 
Manchu  Tartars  and  some  of  the  Chinese  followed  this  cus- 
tom and  also  confined  it  to  the  nobles.  According  to  tradi- 
tion, more  than  a  hundred  male  and  female  attendants  were 
thus  buried  with  one  Japanese  empress  (before  history  be- 
gins, perhaps  in  the  third  century),  and  the  burial  of  the 
living  with  the  dead  continued  till  646  A.  D.  ;  but  the  substi- 
tution of  effigies  for  living  victims  soon  set  aside  the  barbar- 
ous practice,  though  the  substitution  itself  retained  the  idea. 
Finally,  even  the  use  of  effigies  was  discontinued,  as  Bud- 
dhistic burning,  till  the  recent  revival  of  Shinto,  took  the 
place  of  the  older  burial  (about  700  A.  D.),  even  in  the  case 
of  emperors.  The  older  Shinto  regarded  everything  con- 
nected with  death  as  imparting  pollution  and  recognized  no 
religious  funeral  rites.  In  the  early  histories,  "  the  state 
of  the  dead  in  general  is  nowhere  alluded  to."  x  Florenz  has 
pointed  out  that  the  general  practical  distinction  between 

1  Chamberlain,  T.  A.  S.  Japan,  1906,  Appendix  p.  Ivii.  For  the  un- 
derworld, Yomi,  separated  by  a  hill  from  earth  and  somewhat  like 
earth  (in  having  hills,  houses,  etc.),  see  ib.  p.  xlvi.  The  Bon-odori, 
or  lantern  feast  of  All-Souls  celebrated  in  July,  is  a  Buddhist  not  a 
Shinto  festival.  At  this  time  the  souls  of  the  dead  return  to  earth. 
Mourners  wear  white  clothes  and  white  sandals  are  given  the  dead 
for  the  journey  to  the  next  world,  according  to  modern  usage.  Over 
the  "  land  of  gloom,"  Yomotsukuni,  presides  Izanami,  as  a  sort  of 
spirit  of  death. 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  279 

Shintoism  and  Buddhism  with  the  mass  of  Japanese  is  that 
the  chief  joyous  festivals  are  in  honour  of  Shinto  gods;  but 
in  mourning  and  death  the  people  turn  to  Buddhism. 

All  the  early  stories  show  that  the  sun-goddess  was  the 
supreme  object  of  devotion,  both  to  men  and  to  gods. 
Deities  preceding  her  and  her  contemporaries  are  fanciful 
figures  without  religious  significance  and  perhaps  due  to 
foreign  influence.  The  objects  of  religious  regard  and  of 
mythical  interest  are,  like  the  sun,  the  moon,  fire,  the  light- 
ning (as  dragon-sword),  three  water-gods,  volcanoes,  moun- 
tains, trees  and  animals ;  but  not  ghosts.  These  phenomena 
are  revered  directly,  as  spiritually  potent  per  se,  not  as  con- 
taining spirits.  In  other  words  the  earliest  Japanese  belief 
was  pure  naturism.  At  the  same  time  lower  spiritual  beings 
are  regarded  as  incorporate  in  earthly  forms.  But  Fire,  for 
example,  is  not  a  spirit  of  Fire  but  a  phenomenal  power, 
whose  cult  is  still  retained  in  the  now  tricky  "  fire-walking  " 
and  in  the  yearly  fire-festival  (Nov.  8),  when  fires  are 
lighted  in  honour  of  the  food-goddess,  Inari.  The  wife  of 
Ninigi  underwent  a  fire-ordeal  to  prove  her  innocence.  So 
Water  is  judge  in  the  water-ordeal.1 

Popular  spirits,  such  as  ogres,  oni,  and  goblins  with  bird- 
claws,  tengu  (some  tengu  have  temples),  mountain  genii 
(sennin,  in  human  form),  represent  phenomena  though  not 
themselves  phenomena.  Yet  most  of  these,  not  worshipped 
but  dreaded,  are  later  creations  than  the  early  worshipped 
forms  of  nature.  The  first  deities  were  nebulous  forms, 
many  being  sexless,  but  they  reflect  a  nature-cult.  This  is 
clear  in  the  "  earth-propitiation,"  Jishidzume,  not  to  be  ac- 
counted for  by  any  ghost-worship.  The  Great  Offering  at 
the  beginning  of  a  reign,  with  its  tasting  of  first  fruits,  is 
the  chief  Shinto  ceremony.  Though  now  for  the  Mikado 
alone,  it  was  originally  a  general  practice  in  which  the  wor- 
shipper joined  the  deity  in  the  feast.  Gratitude  is  shown; 
it  is  not  a  religion  of  "  perpetual  fear  "  (as  Lafcadio  Hearn 

1  The  red-hot  axe-ordeal  is  another  fire-test ;  but  the  ordeal  by 
boiling  water  is  a  later  form. 


280  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

calls  it).  Human  and  animal  sacrifices  were  made  direct 
to  rivers  and  other  gods,  but  without  any  idea  of  sprinkling 
with  blood.  Gift  and  bargain,  and  occasionally  the  scape- 
goat idea,  are  the  sacrificial  principles  of  Shinto.  The  gift 
was  often  a  mere  symbol  of  affectionate  regard. 

In  a  history  of  religion,  mythology  serves  no  purpose 
except  to  illustrate  religious  ideas.  It  will  be  superfluous, 
therefore,  to  record  the  trivial  and  obscene  tales  of  the  gods 
of  myth.  What  is  imperative  is  that  they  should  be  recog- 
nized as  mainly  mythological,  quasi  historical,  not  as  reli- 
gious. A  brief  outline  of  the  story  of  creation  shows  that 
there  was  no  idea  of  a  creator-god  as  supreme  deity;  that 
the  myth-gods  who  appear  as  progenitors  of  the  race  and 
land  are  not  religiously  important,  since  they  merely  appear 
as  actors  but  receive  no  worship ;  and  that  the  host  of  octad 
gods  are  mere  names,  probably  never  recognized  as  divin- 
ities at  all.1  The  account  of  the  first  gods  in  the  Kojiki  is 
as  follows: 

There  were  once  two  beings,  male  and  female,  who  began 
of  their  own  accord  (not  commanded  to  do  so  by  a  Supreme 
Being)  to  "  invite "  each  other.  First  the  female  invited 
the  male ;  but  this  did  not  please  him.  Then  he  invited  her, 
and  she  agreed  with  him  to  become  the  parents  of  Japan 
and  other  islands,  the  sun  and  other  gods.  Each  of  these 
two  beings,  on  account  of  the  "  invitation,"  has  the  same  pre- 
fix, izana,  Izanagi,  "  male  who  invites,"  Izanami,  "  female 
who  invites."  They  carried  out  what  they  had  planned ;  but 
Izanami  died  in  giving  birth  at  last  to  the  fire-god,  and  de- 
scending below  earth  became  foul  with  corruption.  Izanagi 

1  There  are  different  sets  of  these  gods-by-name.  First,  to  ex- 
plain creation,  are  assumed  such  gods  as  Master-of-Heaven,  High- 
august-producing-wondrous-deity,  and,  third,  Divine-producing-won- 
drous-deity,  who  simply  came  into  existence  and  died.  There  are 
others  of  this  sort,  who  merely  appear  and  die,  till  the  advent  of 
Izanagi  and  Izanami.  Another  set  spring,  chiefly  in  groups  of  eight 
(a  Buddhistic  holy  number),  from  Izanagi's  clothes,  from  the  drops 
of  blood  shed  when  he  kills  the  fire-god,  and  from  the  head  and 
trunk  of  the  fire-god,  all  octads  being  "gods"  without  real  exist- 
ence. 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  281 

sought  her  and  found  her,  but  Izanami,  though  decomposed, 
was  angry  and  he  barely  escaped  to  upper  air  again,  where 
he  slew  the  fire-god,  from  whose  body  came  an  octad  of 
gods,  and  washed  his  eyes  free  of  the  filth  of  the  place  of 
dead.  From  his  left  eye  came  the  Sun,1  from  his  right  the 
Moon,  from  his  nose  Susanowo,  the  "  violent "  god  of 
rain  or  water,  afterwards  also  of  the  underworld.  In  his 
"  violent "  and  mischievous  tricks  he  let  fall,  as  it  were, 
a  number  of  gods  of  no  account.  He  plagued  his  sister, 
the  Sun,  till  she  shut  herself  up  in  a  cave,  when,  with  the 
help  of  one  of  the,  unaccountable,  "  gods  without  crea- 
tion "  (in  the  first  set  of  gods),  he  planned  to  make  his  sis- 
ter, the  Sun,  appear ;  which  he  did  by  dancing  obscenely  till 
she  looked  out  (reminiscence  of  sun-dance?2)  to  see  why 
the  gods  were  laughing,  on  which  was  shown  to  her  her  own 
reflection  in  a  mirror  and  she  was  told  that  the  gods  had 
found  another  fairer  sun.  At  this  she  came  out  and  all  was 
sunny  again.  When  the  gods,  after  banishing  the  "  violent  " 
one  from  heaven,  because  of  his  tricks,  learned  that  earth 
was  now  quieted,  the  grandson  of  the  Sun  came  down  and 
secured  constant  peace  by  slaying  all  who  opposed  him. 
This  was  Ninigi,  great-grandfather  of  Jimmu  (above,  660 
B.  c.).  The  violent  god  also  had  human  descendants,  who 
lived  in  Idzumo. 

Out  of  all  these  myth-gods  only  the  sun-deity,  Ama- 
terasu  (Omikami)  and  the  food-goddess  became  objects  of 
a  cult.  They  all,  whether  good  or  bad,  receive  the  appella- 
tion Kami,  that  is  Superiors,  a  title  conferred  on  any  crea- 
ture, god  or  animal,  who  shows  superiority  to  the  common.3 
From  the  Sun  descend  the  emperors,  called  the  Mi-Kado 
(kado,  gate,  or  mika-to,  "great  place"),  where  justice  is 

1  She  is  thus  twice  created  (a  mixture  of  myths). 

2  The  Kagura  or  sacred  dance  at  Ise  and  Nara  may  perpetuate  this. 
The  equinoctial  (sun)  festival  called  Higan  (March  17-21)  is,  how- 
ever, a  Buddhist  celebration. 

3  Some  of  the  gods  have  tails ;  others,  geographically  remote,  are 
known  as  "  savage  gods " ;  others  become  animals.     Of  the  Kami, 
there  are  eighty  myriads,  or  in  one  account  eight  hundred  myriads. 


282  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

administered.  She,  as  shown  in  the  legend  above,  is  not  a 
creator-deity.  It  is  centuries  later  before  the  god  Masubi 
is  poetically  invoked  as  "  creator  of  men."  The  shrines  or 
temples,  mia,  of  the  pure  Shinto  faith  celebrate  only  natural 
phenomena  and  natural  forces.  Most  of  these  have  only 
local  festivals.  A  few  are  national  and  widely  celebrated. 
Notably  at  Ise  are  found  the  "  outer  "  and  "  inner  "  (Geku 
and  Naiku)  shrines  of  Food  as  goddess  and  Sun  as  goddess, 
respectively.  The  primitive  functions  of  these  divinities 
have  been  enlarged.  To  the  Black  Stone,  Geku,  thousands 
of  diseased  and  maimed  persons  flock  annually  and  cure 
themselves  of  disorders  by  making  offerings.  They  carry  off 
the  shavings  of  the  peeled  rods  called  Gohei,  found  also  in 
the  Ainu  cult,  which  are  now  supposed  to  harbour  spirits  re- 
pugnant to  evil  (spirits).  Tickets  enclosing  such  shavings, 
Ise-o-harai,  are  used  at  the  semi-annual  festivals  of  purifi- 
cation. The  ordinary  Shinto  temples  contain  no  idols  but 
Gohei,  a  mirror,  a  jewel,  and  sword,  connected  with  the 
legend  of  the  Sun  and  her  "  violent "  brother,  together  with 
the  usual  gong,  which  is  struck  by  the  worshipper  to  attract 
the  deity's  attention.  The  visible  mirror  shown  in  Shinto 
shrines  is  a  loan  from  the  Buddhist  Shingon  sect.  The  true 
mirror  is  always  concealed.  This  is  the  mirror  which  is  a 
token  (called  the  "  spirit  ")  of  the  Sun.  Possibly  from  imi- 
tation of  Buddhist  structures  also  may  have  been  derived  the 
Torii  or  gate-ways  closely  resembling  the  Hindu  torana, 
which  stand  as  gates  to  Buddhist  topes  in  India.  The  tem- 
ple itself  is  comparatively  late.  At  first  the  gods  lived  in  a 
walled  enclosure  only.  The  first  emperors  lived  in  struc- 
tures which  were  both  palace  and  temple.  To  the  Sun  and 
Food  as  goddesses  are  presented  offerings  of  food  and  drink 
except  at  festivals,  when  the  Shinto  tokens,  mirror,  sword, 
jewel,  and  cloth  are  given  to  the  shrine.  Great  care  is  taken 
not  to  pollute  the  food  by  the  breath;  the  face  is  veiled. 
This  cult  is  without  doubt  the  earliest.  The  only  general 
ritual  in  early  days  was  the  Ohoharahi  or  great  purification, 
the  object  of  which  was  twice  a  year  to  free  the  land  of  evil, 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  283 

either  as  disease  or  sin.  All  "  foulness/'  incest  or  leprosy, 
for  example,  was  deposited  on  a  horse  and  washed  off  in 
the  sea,  the  scape-goat  idea.  It  is  now  regarded  as  a  pro- 
pitiatory service.  Similarly  the  ritual  called  Norito  is  now 
regarded  as  "  laudation,"  but  its  original  meaning  was  to 
ask  for  favours  for  a  consideration  (do  nt  des).  The  most 
ancient  prayers  contain  both  praise  and  statements  regard- 
ing offerings  made  as  quid  pro  quo.  The  Mikado  celebrates 
an  offering  of  first  fruits  and,  according  to  later  regulations, 
there  are  festivals  consisting  in  imploring  the  gods x  to 
give  good  crops,  rites  to  invoke  the  water-god,  the  fire-god, 
etc.,  to  do  no  harm.  But  there  is  no  invocation  of  ancestors, 
nothing  to  indicate  that  the  Japanese  looked  to  ghosts  to 
give  them  goods,  as  in  China. 

Apart  from  nature-worship,  there  are  innumerable  traces 
of  phallic  worship  in  phallic  symbols  found  everywhere.  It 
is  impossible  to  dissociate  these  symbols  from  those  used  in 
certain  houses  where  the  meaning  is  obvious,  though  an 
attempt  has  been  made  by  Shintoists  to  soften  their  signifi- 
cance by  the  explanation  that  they  merely  represent  power 
and  so  are  used  as  admonitory  warnings  against  trespass. 
They  are  still  openly  invoked  by  women  wishing  to  succeed 
in  their  ancient,  profession.  Temples,  at  Nikko  and  else- 
where, retain  numerous  Konsei  or  phalloi  for  their  original 
purpose. 

Shinto  had  no  organized  priesthood;  the  emperor  was  the 
religious  head  and  acted  as  chief  priest.  Other  priests  were 
laymen  acting  as  attendants  of  the  shrine.  There  was  no 
formal  cult  of  animals  (the  fox-cult  is  late)  2  or  of  trees,  but 

1  Thus  the  harvest-god,  Hitoshi,  is  implored  to  give  rice,  etc.,  and 
is  rewarded  with  a  horse,  cock,  and  pig.    All  these  gods   in   the 
"  godless  month   of   October "   desert   their  shrines   and   go   to   the 
temple  of  Idzumo,  except  the  deaf  "god  of  luck,"  Ebisu.    In  Id- 
zumo  is  found  today  the  purest  Shinto. 

2  Inari,  the  food-goddess    (or  food-god),  originally  rode  a   fox, 
as   other  gods   ride   stag,   tortoise,   etc.    This    fox    became   revered 
as  itself   a  divine   power,  injuring  crops.     "Fox-possession"   is   a 
popular  superstition;  the  victim  must  pay  a  priest  to  exorcise  the 
demon-fox. 


2»4  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

both  are  occasionally  revered  as  Kami.1  There  is  no  totem- 
ism  and  no  regular  metempsychosis,  but  transmigration  into 
animal  forms  is  spoken  of  in  legends.  "  Possession,"  in  this 
life,  by  foxes  and  demons  is  common.  Buddhistic  influence 
has  made  itself  felt  in  the  reckoning  of  myriads  of  gods, 
whose  number  as  Kami  is  of  course  unlimited.  It  is  said 
there  are  thirty-seven  thousand  Shinto  shrines;  but  many 
of  these  are  indifferently  mia  and  tera  (Buddhistic).  It  is 
difficult  also  to  extract  from  common  Shinto  domestic  serv- 
ice the  unadulterated  Shinto  form.  Each  family  now  has 
at  home  a  Kami-dana  or  god-shelf  and,  apart  from  this, 
Ihai  or  tablets  to  the  ancestors  (Chinese),  to  whom  offer- 
ings are  made  and  before  whom  a  lamp  (Buddhistic)  is 
lighted.  Handclapping  and  bowing  in  the  ordinary  service 
represent  the  nearest  approach  to  "  praise  and  prayer."  No 
moral  or  spiritual  blessings  are  asked  for.  At  festivals 
music  and  dancing  are  ritualistic.  Statues  as  idols  'have 
been  taken  over  from  Buddhism. 

Besides  the  lack  of  a  priesthood,  Shinto,  until  affected  by 
Buddhism,  had  no  idea  of  a  heaven  or  hell,  no  idols  (the 
mirror  can  scarcely  be  regarded  as  such)  and  no  religiously 
moral  code.  There  is  in  fact  no  ethical  distinction  possible 
in  gods  who  are  all  equally  gods  whether  good  or  bad. 
Intercourse  with  the  gods  was  not  the  object  of  the  simple 
divination  practised  by  the  Urabe  (diviners).  It  was  not 
to  find  out  what  was  the  gods'  will,  but  to  peer  into  the 
future,  that  recourse  was  had  to  dreams,  to  chance  utter- 
ances, to  the  cracks,  on  the  deer's  shoulder-blade  and  tor- 
toise-shell, made  by  fire  (Chinese  model).  Of  deep  religious 
feeling  there  is  none  in  pure  Shinto ;  the  devotional  act  is 
perfunctory.  Religious  fervour  entered  Shinto  with  the 
worship  of  the  Mikado,  who  concentrates  in  himself  the 
intense  loyalty  of  the  people  and  is  both  loved  as  emperor 

1  Crabs  and  bugs  found  in  certain  parts  of  Japan  are  still  popu- 
larly regarded  as  embodying  the  spirits  of  certain  clans  and  leaders 
of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries.  Star-worship,  in  distinction 
from  sun-worship,  is  not  an  early  Shinto  trait. 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  285 

and  adored  as  divine  representative  of  the  Sun.  But  all 
this  is  a  new  feature  of  Shinto.  There  were  many  centuries 
when  the  emperor  was  disregarded  and  looked  upon  as  in  no 
sense  a  quasi  divinity. 

Although  Shinto  had  no  moral  code,  it  recognized  the 
virtue  of  courage  and  kindness  as  religiously  endorsed  by 
the  character  of  the  sun-deity.  It  also,  in  conjunction  with 
the  Chinese  model,  from  which  in  this  regard  it  is  difficult 
to  separate  it,  valued  expressly  the  Chinese  Five  Relations, 
but  laid  the  weight,  not  upon  filial  piety,  as  did  its  model,  but 
upon  loyalty.  Magic,  incest,  and  bestiality  were  regarded  in 
general  as  offences  against  the  Kami.  Lying  was  not  reli- 
giously offensive.  Marriage,  like  burial,  was  without  reli- 
gious sanction.  Modern  Japanese  moralists,  and  so  Mo- 
toori  in  the  eighteenth  century,  defend  the  lack  of  a  higher 
ethical  code  in  Shinto  by  insisting  that  all  moral  systems 
imply  a  defective  morality.  The  good  old  Japanese  were 
so  good  that  a  moral  code  was  superfluous.  Under  the 
influence  of  Chinese  civilization  was  eventually  evolved  the 
Bushido  "  Way  of  Warriors,"  the  code  of  chivalry.  It  re- 
flects the  spirit  of  Japan  at  its  ethical  acme,  though  drawn 
as  much  from  foreign  as  from  purely  native  sources.  This 
code  taught  loyalty  to  the  emperor,1  inculcated  obedience  to 
authority,  stoicism,  and  Giri,  or  duty  (right)  of  revenge 
and  of  committing  suicide,  harakiri,  on  occasion.  It  taught 
also,  by  practice  as  well  as  teaching,  that  no  means  was  too 
base  to  compass  the  end  regarded  as  righteous.  A  life  of 

1The  great  code  of  Prince  Shotoku,  which  (circa  600  A.  D.)  is 
based  on  a  Chinese  model,  already  insists  on  "  paying  due  heed  to 
the  orders  of  the  emperor."  The  "  prince  is  like  heaven,  the  sub- 
jects like  earth."  This  code  also  insists  on  the  (Bushido)  rule  of 
"  politeness."  Bushido,  therefore,  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  Shinto 
product,  but  a  combination  representing  the  warriors'  interpretation 
of  rules  of  conduct,  the  base  of  which  lies  at  the  close  of  the  pure 
Shinto  period.  It  derives  from  the  inherent  character  of  the  Japa- 
nese as  modified  by  Chinese  influence,  but  it  did  not  attain  its  real 
meaning  till  the  Tokugawa  Shogunate  put  an  end  to  feudalism  and 
established  Confucianism  as  interpreted  by  Chu  Hi,  the  Chinese 
philosopher  of  the  twelfth  century,  who  inculcated  obedience  to  the 
emperor  as  the  first  duty  of  man. 


286  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

debauchery,  the  sacrifice  of  women  to  such  a  life,  lying  and 
murder,  if  practised  for  the  sake  of  one's  chief,  were  not 
only  blameless  but  obligatory.  It  descended  also  to  points 
of  refinement  in  dress,  taught  good  manners,  "  politeness," 
and  also  emphasized  the  training  of  women,  not  treating  her 
according  to  Western  notions  of  chivalry  but  educating  her 
to  be  courageous  and  self -controlled.  It  ignored  chastity 
in  men  but  insisted  upon  it  in  women,  unless  it  was  neces- 
sary to  sacrifice  it  for  loyalty's  sake.  This  code  arose  in 
the  Kamakura  period  (1186-1339  A-  D0  and  was  that  of  the 
Samurai,  the  warriors  of  the  Daimios  or  feudal  lords,  who 
in  the  person  of  the  chief  Daimio,  the  Shogun,  held  all  the 
power  in  the  middle  ages.  They  used  it  to  make  a  mere 
effigy  of  the  Mikado,  who  was  not  restored  to  imperial  power 
till  the  revolution  of  1868.  Buddhism  contributed  not  a  lit- 
tle to  this  end  (see  below),  but  there  is  no  Shinto  protest 
against  the  submergence  of  the  emperor  till  quite  late.  To 
pass  over  the  Buddhistic  period  for  a  moment,  it  will  suffice 
to  say  that  it  was  not  till  the  fourteenth  century  that  there 
was  any  attempt  to  revive  pure  Shinto,  which  for  six  cen- 
turies had  been  merged  with  Buddhism.  Kitabatake  Chika- 
fusa  (1354  A.  D.)  made  a  first  endeavour  to  reconstruct  a 
pure  Shinto,  as  opposed  to  the  mixed  Shinto  composed  of 
Shinto,  Confucianism,  and  Buddhism.  In  the  seventeenth 
century,  Hayashi  made  another  effort  to  free  Shinto  from 
Buddhism,  but  his  own  Shinto  was  largely  Confucian.1  It 
was  not  till  much  later,  under  the  influence  of  learned  and 
patriotic  leaders,2  that  the  present  conception  of  Shinto 
came  into  being,3  an  idealized  Shinto,  which  discards  other 

1  When,  in  1603,  the  Tokugawa  clan  obtained  supremacy,  the  edu- 
cated classes  turned  Confucian. 

2Mabuchi  (1697-1769),  Motoori  (1730-1801),  Hirata  (1776-1843) 
devoted  themselves  to  the  revival  of  "  pure  Shinto,"  frowned  on 
the  Shagunate,  as  on  Buddhist,  and  Chinese  learning,  and  sought 
truth  in  Japanese  imperialism.  This  movement  culminated  in  the 
disestablishment  of  Buddhism  in  1868. 

s  The  Yuitsu  sect  of  Shinto  started  in  the  fifteenth  century  as  a 
"Unitarian"  (yui-itsu)  sect  in  opposition  to  the  mmture  of  Shinto 
and  Buddhism  called  Ryobu  (below).  In  its  early  form  it  was 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  287 

religions  while  it  has  little  faith  in  its  own  mythology,  but 
emphasizes  what  it  considers  the  spirit  of  Shinto,  that  is, 
devotion  to  the  native  cult,  especially  as  represented  by  the 
cult  of  the  (Mikado)  descendant  of  the  Sun,  withal  as  ex- 
pressing the  emotion  of  patriotism,  the  feeling  of  national 
unity  as  a  religious  trait.  The  substitution  for  religion  in 
Japan  today  is  Shinto  as  Yamato-Damashii,  the  Spirit  of 
Old  Japan. 

Shinto  now  covers  in  popular  usage  a  number  of  super- 
stitious and  licentious  practices,  such  as  the  Tenri-  and 
Remmon-Kyo,  founded  by  ignorant  peasants,  which  go 
under  the  name  of  Shinto  without  having  any  real  relation 
to  it.  Shinto  has  been  largely  affected  by  Buddhism,  chiefly 
in  a  Chinese  form  of  that  faith.  Japan  itself  has  modified 
its  borrowed  religion  and  philosophy,  but  has  originated 
little.  No  high  ethical  code  and  no  native  philosophic  system 
arose  among  the  Japanese,  perhaps  because  Japan  was  in- 
fluenced from  without  before  it  reached  the  highest  intel- 
lectual level.  Its  best  philosophical  work  has  been  in  syn- 
thetic harmonizing  of  precedent  systems. 

Buddhism,  as  has  already  been  indicated,  meant  much 
more  to  Japan  than  it  did  to  China,  where  it  impinged  upon 
a  long  established  religious  culture.  Into  savage  Japan  in 
the  sixth  and  seventh  centuries  of  our  era  Buddhism  sud- 
denly brought  its  whole  paraphernalia  of  books,  images, 
gods,  saints,  hells,  heavens,  and  means  of  "  salvation,"  and 
with  its  overpowering  appeal  to  sense,  feeling,  and  thought 
inundated  the  simple  religious  elements  with  which  it  came 
in  contact.  Most  of  the  Japanese  "  gods  "  were  only  nat- 
ural powers  regarded  as  supranatural ;  many  of  the  mytho- 
logical figures  were  rather  "  heroes  "  than  gods,  resembling 
such  figures  as  Hiawatha  among  the  American  Indians. 
These  were  said  to  be  mischievous  spirits  and  were  talked 
about  as  figures  of  a  story  rather  than  worshipped.  Of 

merely  a  combination  of  old  Shinto  with  Taoistic  and  other  ele- 
ments. Geku-Shinto  followed  in  the  next  century,  promulgated  by 
the  priests  of  the  Geku-shrine  and  mixed  with  Confucianism. 


288  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

man's  place  in  the  universe,  of  the  universe  itself  as  real  or 
ideal,  of  a  basis  of  religion,  of  a  God,  of  any  need  of 
"  salvation/'  no  Japanese  had  apparently  thought  at  all 
until  Buddhism  arrived  in  Nippon.  In  the  sixth  century 
(583  A.  D.)  an  image  of  Buddha  was  sent  to  Japan  from 
Korea,  where  Buddhism  had  been  at  home  for  two  cen- 
turies; but  this  formal  introduction  coincided  with  a  do- 
mestic calamity  which  made  the  new  religion,  or  rather  the 
new  god,  for  the  religion  was  not  yet  understood,  seem  in- 
auspicious, and  though  the  Koreans  tried  again  to  implant 
their  faith  in  Japan  it  was  without  result.  The  real  pro- 
moter of  Buddhism  in  Japan  was  Prince  Shotoku  Taishi 
(593  A.  D.),  who  first  learned  from  a  Korean  priest  the 
simple  moral  code  of  a  Buddhist  (not  to  steal,  not  to  lie, 
not  to  get  drunk,  not  to  kill,  and  not  to  commit  adultery). 
Shotoku  was  virtually  the  ruler  of  the  country  and  used  his 
power  to  erect  many  Buddhist  images,  build  forty-six  Bud- 
dhist temples,  tera,  domicile  1,386  Buddhist  monks  and 
nuns,  and  support  with  all  the  power  of  the  court  the  now 
firmly  established  faith.  He  was  also  instrumental  in  pre- 
paring the  Japanese  code  of  laws  referred  to  above,  based 
on  Chinese  models.1  Buddhism  thus  introduced  was  an 
alien  creed  and  its  many  missionaries  felt  the  need  of  mak- 
ing the  common  people  believe  that  it  differed  only  in  form 
from  Shinto.  For  this  purpose  they  had  to  adopt  even- 
tually the  same  means  which  in  the  first  centuries  of  our 
era  led  to  the  successful  introduction  of  pagan  gods  and 
heroes  and  festivals  into  the  Christian  church  as  forms 
of  Christian  figures  and  feasts.  Thus,  as  in  America  the 
Jesuits  said  to  the  Redskins,  *'  Whom  you  worship  as  Manito 
we  call  God,  worship  Him,"  so  the  Buddhist  priest  said  to 
the  Japanese  barbarian,  "  Whom  you  worship  as  sun-deity 

1  In  605  A.  D.  there  was  already  direct  communication  with  Chinese 
Buddhism.  In  the  laws  of  Shotoku  it  is  said:  "Honour  the  three 
jewels  of  Buddhism,  the  priests,  the  ritual,  the  founder.  It  is  the 
highest  religion  in  the  world.  Without  Buddhism  there  is  no  way 
to  make  men  turn  from  wrong  to  right." 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  289 

we  call  the  Sun  of  righteousness  and  of  being,  Vairocana, 
worship  Him."  The  union  thus  effected  became  known 
as  Ryobu  Shinto,  the  Twofold  Way  of  the  Gods.  Other 
Buddhist  figures,  saints  and  incarnations,  were  as  easily 
amalgamated  and,  what  had  been  lacking  in  Japanese  belief, 
a  system  of  eschatology  based  on  a  moral  code. 

As  Buddhist  power  began  to  make  itself  felt,  always  un- 
der royal  patronage,  Buddhist  practices  replaced  Shinto 
customs.  Thus  burial  gave  place  to  cremation  and  the 
slaughter  of  animals  for  sacrifices  was  discontinued  in 
favour  of  floral  and  vegetable  offerings.  Buddhism  ig- 
nored ancestor-worship,  which  by  this  time  had  become 
Shintoistic  as  it  was  Confucian.  But  the  identification  of 
Shinto  gods  with  Buddhist  spirits  went  far  to  heal  this 
breach  between  the  two  religions.  In  673-686  A.  D.  the 
emperor  Temmu  forbade  the  eating  of  flesh  and  made 
the  Buddhistic  service  obligatory  in  every  home.  Under 
the  empress  Jito  (690-702  A.  D.)  there  were  already  545 
Buddhist  temples  in  Japan.  For  two  centuries  after  this, 
Chinese  culture  and  Chinese  Buddhism  were  the  objects  of 
unstinted  regard  and  deference  on  the  part  of  the  court. 
The  reason  was  largely  political.  To  maintain  itself,  the 
imperial  power  tried  to  break  up  the  old  government  of 
clans  and  families  and  substitute  a  centralized  power,  after 
the  model  of  China.  It  did  away  with  the  provincial  pleni- 
potentiaries who  had  usurped,  as  the  court  looked  at  it, 
royal  prerogatives.  It  appointed  salaried  officers  to  govern 
the  provinces  instead  of  hereditary  heads  of  clans,  who  had 
received  taxes  and  made  their  own  government.  Taxes 
were  now  paid  direct  to  the  emperor  and  all  land  was  de- 
clared to  be  owned  by  him.  Court  favour  thus  paid  to  the 
Chinese  system  included  Chinese  culture  of  all  kinds  and 
Buddhism  as  representative  of  Chinese  religion.  It  was  not 
foreseen  that  exactly  this  element  was  to  prove  deleterious 
to  royal  ambition.1  Undoubtedly  the  educated  classes  and 

1  As  early  as  the  eighth  century  a  Buddhist  priest,  favourite  of  the 
empress-dowager,  caused  the  exile  of  the  emperor  and  endeavoured 


2QO  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

court  circles,  which  included  men  of  the  highest  attain- 
ments and  often  men  who  had  had  a  prolonged  training  on 
Chinese  soil,  looked  askance  at  the  barbarous  simplicity  of 
Shinto  and  welcomed  Buddhism  both  as  an  intellectual  gain 
and  as  a  political  advantage.  But  the  insidious  arts  of  the 
Buddhist  religious  leaders,  who  were  veritable  pontiffs,  pos- 
sessing their  own  estates  and  their  own  military  adherents 
by  the  thousands,  soon  made  themselves  felt  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  very  patrons  who  had  established  them  in  power. 
Not  only  were  the  weak-minded  emperors  persuaded  that 
the  way  of  salvation  for  prince  and  people  was  best  fol- 
lowed by  the  retirement  of  the  emperor  from  the  world, 
whereby  the  Buddhists  got  rid  of  their  rulers  by  the  time 
these  puppets  began  to  feel  themselves  too  royal  (the  age 
of  religious  retirement  was  at  latest  from  forty  to  forty- 
five),  but  the  overweening  pride  of  these  ecclesiastics  flung 
into  the  field  again  and  again  armies  which,  when  an  emperor 
proved  obdurate,  attacked  and  subdued  the  royal  forces  and 
brought  the  power  of  the  emperor  to  naught.  Moreover, 
when  not  contending  with  the  throne,  one  sect  would  fight 
another  whenever  the  objectionable  sect  needed  to  be  re- 
pressed. The  monasteries  were  in  short  armed  camps  of 
religious  fanatics  and  potential  traitors  from  the  moment 
they  arrived  at  power  to  the  moment  when  they  were  sup- 
pressed. It  was  they  who,  as  religious  leaders,  influenced 
and  encouraged  the  Daimios  and  Shogun  "  leaders  of  ar- 
mies "  to  resist  the  centralizing  effect  of  imperial  preroga- 
tives, until  first  the  Fujiwara1  family  (670-1050  A.  D.)  and 
then  others,  the  Taira  and  Minamoto  families,  of  more  mili- 
tary character,  reduced  the  Mikado  to  a  mere  effigy.  The 
emperor  Shirakawa2  (1073-1087  A.  D.),  who  finally  had  to 
invite  the  Minamoto  clan  to  defend  him  against  the  priests 

to  place  himself  upon  the  throne.  He  was  prevented  only  by  the 
courage  of  one  man  who  got  from  a  Shinto  shrine  an  "oracle" 
forbidding  the  act. 

1  The  ancestor  of  the  Fujiwaras  descended  from  heaven  and  the 
family  is  said  to  rank  with  that  of  the  emperor  in  age  and  honour. 

2  This  emperor  robbed  his  treasury  to  build  temples.    Under  him 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  291 

and  thus  inaugurated  the  dynasty  of  this  clan,  complained 
that  "  dice,  rivers,  and  Buddhists  "  were  the  three  things  that 
would  not  obey  him.  When  such  a  clan  became  allied  with 
the  religious  leaders  it  became  too  strong  to  be  extirpated  and 
the  best  the  court  could  do  was  to  retain  the  semblance  of 
dignity  which  it  lacked.1 

Of  the  sects  introduced  into  Japan;  some  were  mere 
schools  and  their  adherents  were  merely  secluded  scholars, 
who  had  no  effect  on  statecraft  or  on  the  religion  of  the 
masses.  Others  were  militant  and  aggressive;  their  ad- 
herents were  both  scholars  who  disputed  in  regard  to  the 
interpretation  of  scriptures  and  worldly  schemers  who  util- 
ized religion  to  influence  politics.  To  the  mass  of  people, 
the  various  forms  of  Buddhism,  represented  by  the  "  twelve 
schools"  (or  more),  were,  as  metaphysical  variations,  unin- 
telligible. The  populace  reacted  not  to  such  intellectual  sub- 
tleties but  to  the  outward  glory  of  a  religion  which  pre- 
sented to  their  unaccustomed  eyes  and  ears  a  magnificent 
ritual,  imposing  temples,  gorgeous  processions,  richly  clothed 
priests,  waving  banners,  genuflexions,  mystic  mutterings, 
incense,  bells,  chaunts,  readings  in  an  unknown  tongue,  and 
added  to  all  this  the  promise  of  a  future  life  of  happiness 
and  the  service,  at  their  disposal,  of  learned  and  potent  ma- 
gicians, which  was  the  view  held  by  the  common  people  in 
regard  to  the  monks. 

It  will  be  useful,  however,  to  sketch  in  briefest  outline 
the  distinctions  between  the  Buddhist  sects,  because  at 
least  two  of  the  twelve  became  the  real  interpreters  of 
Buddhism  to  the  common  people.  Curiously  enough,  most 
of  these  sects  are  not  established  upon  a  broad  basis  of 

the  Buddhists  fought  in  arms  against  each  other  and  against  the 
government. 

1  The  Taira  family  was  overthrown  in  1185  A.  D.  It  was  super- 
seded by  the  Minamotos  and  they  held  power  till  subdued  by  the 
Ashikogas,  whose  dynasty  lasted  from  1338  to  the  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  This  last  family  in  1392  settled  the  contest  between 
the  "two  emperors"  (of  the  south  and  north)  in  favour  of  the 
northern  court.  Defeated  by  Nobunaga,  they  finally  yielded  to  the 
Tokugawa  family  (1603-1868). 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Buddhistic  scriptures  but  each  upon  a  body  of  doctrine 
drawn  from  one  late  Buadhistic  tract.  It  is  as  if  Chris- 
tian sects  were  based  on  selected  writings  of  the  Church 
Fathers,  a  City-ot-God  sect,  etc. 

Of  the  sects,  the  majority  are  of  Chinese  origin  and  they 
are  divided  also  by  geographical  distinctions.  The  earliest, 
brought  from  China,  were  sects  of  the  old  Nara  period 
(720-760  A.  D.).  Then  come  the  two  great  mediaeval  sects 
(c.  800-1000),  when  Kioto  was  made  the  capital ;  and  finally 
the  four  most  important  sects,  Zen,  Jodo,  Shin,  and  Nichi- 
ren,  of  the  Kamakura  period  (between  1175  and  1253). 
Only  the  oldest  sects  belong  to  the  Hinayana  or  Little  Ve- 
hicle. We  shall  find  also  that  there  is  a  sudden  change  of 
base  in  the  religious  position  of  these  sects,  from  knowledge 
to  faith,  from  agnosticism  or  atheistic  idealism  to  the  idea  of 
God,  as  mercy  or  immortal  life  or  immortal  glory,  Amida, 
etc.  But  the  idea  itself  was  not  new.  Faith  and  God  were 
old  properties  of  Buddhistic  propaganda  and  Amida  was 
contemplated  mystically  long  before  there  was  a  Jodo  sect. 
It  is  simply  that  in  Japan  as  in  India  the  need  of  God  and  the 
faith-form  of  salvation  came  later  to  sectarian  expression. 
The  period  intervening  between  that  of  Buddhistic  organ- 
ization and  this  reform  was  one  of  degeneration,  civil  wars, 
and  the  rise  of  military  clans.1 

It  will  be  unnecessary  to  discuss  all  the  sects,  which, 
though  counted  officially  as  twelve,  really  number,  when 
the  sub-sects  are  included,  about  fifty.  Typical  sects  or 
schools  which  really  have  no  religious  importance  among 
the  people  are,  for  example,  the  (seventh  century)  Kusha, 
a  school  studying  particularly  one  text  which,  as  its  name 
implies,  resembles  a  "  storehouse  "  of  Little  Vehicle  meta- 

1  For  convenience  these  periods  may  be  roughly  estimated  as :  500- 
800  A.  a,  period  of  establishment,  introduction  of  aid  sects,  Prince 
Shotoku  and  the  Nara  sects;  800-1000  A.  D.,  ecclesiastical  organiza- 
tion, the  Kioto  sects,  Genshin,  the  abbot  of  Eshinin,  pioneer  of 
the  Amida  cult;  1000-1200  A.  D.,  ecclesiastical  decay,  civil  wars, 
Minamoto  dictatorship  at  Kamakura;  1200-1300,  religious  reforma- 
tion, Amida-worship,  Zen  sect,  etc. 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  293 

physics;  also  the  synchronous  sects  called  Sanron1  and 
Jojitsu  (subjective  idealism),  the  latter  of  which,  now 
extinct,  was  a  school  of  the  Little  Vehicle,  while  the  San- 
ron professed  to  be  eclectic;  and  the  Vinaya  or  Ritsu  sect 
(Little  Vehicle),  all  of  which  were  branches  of  or  studied 
especially  the  tenets  of  the  Hosso,  of  Dosho  and  Gyogi 
Bosatsu.  The  Vinaya  (sect)  was  brought  directly  from 
China  to  Japan  and  established  without  modifications  in 
the  eighth  century.  The  Hosso  sect,  brought  to  Japan  in 
625  A.  D.  (or  c.  650?),  is  still  extant  and  has  the  longest 
history  of  all  the  sects.  It  was  Gyogi  Bosatsu,  a  leader  of 
this  sect,  who  (above)  first  thought  of  identifying  the  Sun 
with  the  Buddhist  Vairocana.  At  present  this  sect  is  the 
smallest  of  all,  having  only  forty-one  temples  and  less  than 
seventy  priests;  but  historically  it  is  one  of  the  most  inter- 
esting, since  it  came  directly  from  India  to  China,  whence 
it  was  almost  at  once  transplanted  to  Japan,  and  is  most 
closely  connected  with  the  Hindu  Yoga  philosophy.  Like 
the  Sanron  it  is  eclectic  in  its  scriptures  and  as  a  Mahayana 
sect  teaches  subjective  idealism.  Many  of  the  earlier 
sects  have  disappeared.  They  yielded,  probably  because  of 
their  lack  of  contact  with  4t  real  life,"  2  to  the  later  schools, 
most  of  which  belong  to  the  Great  Vehicle.  Of  these, 
the  pantheistic  Kegon  sect,  which  came  to  Japan  in  735  A.  D., 
is  made  picturesque  on  account  of  the  fables  attached  to  its 
transmission  and  the  divine  manifestations  which  took  place 
when  it  was  revealed.  In  the  eighth  century  also  came 
from  China  the  somewhat  similar  but  warlike  Tendai  sect, 
which  dared  to  assert  and  maintain  temporal  authority 
against  the  court.  It  was  introduced  (767-822)  by  Saicho 
(Dengyo  Daishi)  and  teaches  that  salvation  may  be  ob- 

iThis  school  denies  the  real  existence  of  phenomena  and  main- 
tains that  nothing  is  known  of  the  noumenal  world. 

2  The  sects  at  first  were  aristocratic  schools  of  scholars  supported 
by  and  resident  in  Nara,  the  capital,  or  near  it.  All  that  the  com- 
mon people  got  from  them  was  the  universal  Buddhistic  truths, 
knowledge  of  Karma  (Japanese  Ingwa),  desire  of  Nirvana,  worship 
of  Buddha,  celebration  of  his  birthday  (April  8),  etc. 


294  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

tained  by  the  realization  of  what  it  calls  "  Buddha  "  in  one- 
self through  any  means  fitted  to  the  intelligence  of  the 
learner  (hence  unjustly  called  "Jesuitical  Buddhism"  by 
some  Western  scholars).  It  even  took  into  its  fold  Shinto 
gods,  such  as  Fudo,  the  many-faced  god  who  dispels  de- 
mons with  fire.  It  is  based  on  the  text  called  the  Lotus  of 
the  True  Law  (or  Perfect  Truth).  At  one  time  it  had 
40,000  monks,  but  it  has  at  present  little  influence  in  its 
original  form,  though  it  has  developed  three  sub-sects. 
This  and  the  following  Shingon  sect  were  most  influential 
during  the  Heian  period  (794-1186  A.  D.),  toward  the  close 
of  which  the  monks  began  to  take  more  interest  in  politics 
than  in  religion.  In  the  following  period  (1186-1339) 
Yoritomo  (d.  1200)  had  to  forbid  the  priests  to  carry  arms.1 
Shingon  or  the  True  Word  sect  (also  based  on  the  Lotus) 
followed  Tendai.  The  Word  was  no  more  than  a  mantra 
or  magic  formula;  one  who  knew  it  could  produce  any 
desired  effect,  including  salvation,  by  thinking.  Kukai  or 
Kobo  was  its  introducer,  a  clever  painter  and  engineer 
(774-835  A.  D.),  who  had  studied  Buddhism  in  China  with 
Saicho  (804  A.  D.)  and  like  him  established  Shinto  gods  as 
Buddhist  saints.  Buddha  in  this  sect,  as  in  most  of  the 
Mahayana  sects,  was  not  so  important  as  the  Universal 
Being  called  Vairocana  (Jap.  Biroshana),  a  form  of 
Buddha,  or  rather  that  eternal  Buddha  of  whom  the  his- 
torical Buddha  is  a  manifestation.  Magic  and  a  gorgeous 
ritual  made  this  sect  acceptable  to  the  masses ;  the  doctrine 
that  mind  and  matter  are  one  and  that  every  one  can  become 
Buddha  (for  Buddha  is  the  universe  inherent  even  in  dust) 
endeared  it  to  the  admirers  of  mystic  pantheism.  Tendai 
and  Shingon  are  the  only  sects  to  adopt  the  Tibetan  prayer- 
wheel.  A  similar  contrivance,  seen  at  some  temples,  is  more 

1  The  Tendai  was  an  attempt  (begun  in  China  by  Chi  K'ai)  to 
harmonize  all  sects ;  but  in  Japan  it  tended  to  adopt  the  "  vacuity  " 
principle :  real  being  is  beyond  all  phenomena  and  relativity ;  the 
universal  must  be  manifested  in  the  particular;  reality  unites  both. 
This  was  the  doctrine  Nichiren  (below)  sought  to  restore  to  purity 
from  the  mixed  Shinto-Buddhism  of  the  later  schools. 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  295 

original.  It  is  called  rinso,  a  revolving  book-case  contain- 
ing Buddhist  scriptures.  The  believer  who  revolves  it  with 
the  hand  gets  all  the  merit  of  revolving  the  contents  of 
the  volumes  in  the  head. 

The  last  two  sects  are  the  first  of  the  Kioto  sects,  called 
by  some  writers  the  mediaeval  sects  in  distinction  from  the 
old  sects,  which  had  already  declined  by  the  eighth  century. 
Their  influence  was  clearly  in  the  direction  of  popularizing 
religion  and  making  it  easy  for  the  common  people,  though 
the  metaphysics  of  the  Tendai  and  the  mysticism  of  the 
Shingon  were  only  for  adepts.  After  the  prestige  of  the 
Tendai  was  lost,  an  offshoot  of  the  sect  carried  still  further 
the  popularization  of  Buddhism. 

This  was  the  Zen  or  Contemplation *  sect,  which  has 
three  schools.  Its  original  thought  is  that  book-knowledge 
is  vain;  one  must  find  salvation  by  looking  into  one's  own 
soul.  This  view  led  to  a  practical  revolt  against  idolatry  and 
made  the  believers  quietists  (the  Rinzai  school,  founded  by 
Eisai,  1141-1215).  Another  school  of  this  sect  gave  up  this 
extreme  view  and  devoted  itself  to  study  as  well  as  to  con- 
templation (the  Soto  or  Sodo  school,  founded  by  Dogen, 
1200-1253).  The  names  are  taken  from  Chinese  Buddhists 
of  an  earlier  date.  The  third  school  (Obaku)  was  founded 
by  a  Chinese  priest,  Ingen  by  name,  in  1650.  The  Zen  sects 
were  virtually  Japanese  (not  Chinese).  They  remained  not 
only  active  but  militant  and  acrimonious  up  to  the  present 
day.  The  most  remarkable  result  of  this  teaching  of  con- 
templation, a  mystic  self -intoxication,  which  has  earned  the 
Zen  the  name  of  Quakers  of  Japan,  is  that  it  has  become  the 
favourite  sect  of  the  warrior  class.  Yet  this  apparent  con- 
tradiction is  easily  explained.  The  Zen  sect  was  located  at 
Kamakura  (military  headquarters).  Contemplation  and 
finding  God  within  oneself  easily  become  in  unphilosophic 
minds  a  laissez  faire  religion,  which  emphasizes  the  beauty 

iThat  is  Dhyana,  the  school  of  Bodhidharma,  which  reached 
China  in  520  A.  D.  The  method  was  old;  the  sect  merely  stressed 
the  old  feature. 


296  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  godliness  of  non-action  in  religious  matters,  while  the 
essential  contemplation  is  transformed  into  idle  thought  or 
vacuity  of  thought.  It  thus  gave  the  soldiers  freedom  from 
ritual  and  from  mental  effort,  which  was  all  they  desired. 
It  became  and  still  is  one  of  the  largest  and  most  popular 
sects,  and  to  its  influence  is  partly  due  the  chivalrous  char- 
acter of  the  native  soldier.  It  may  be  said  to  have  trans- 
ported Buddhism  from  the  school  to  real  life. 

But  in  all  the  sects  thus  far  mentioned,  salvation,  though 
admittedly  better  than  non-salvation,  was  rather  a  vague 
benefit  to  the  common  man.  He  was  taught  that  salvation 
meant  Nirvana,  practically  (in  Japan)  absorption  or  union 
with  the  Blessed  All,  and  since  the  alternative  was  a  dreary 
outlook  of  perpetual  pain  he  was  easily  induced  to  strive 
for  salvation,  especially  when  this  was  attainable  at  little 
or  no  cost,  as  among  the  adherents  of  the  Zen  sects.  Be- 
cause, without  exception,  these  sects  granted  salvation  as 
the  reward  either  of  knowledge  or  of  the  illumination  which 
came  from  contemplation,  they  were  known  as  sects  incul- 
cating the  old  way  of  Salvation  by  the  Law.  Just  after 
the  Zen  sect  had  begun  its  existence,  arose  the  first  of  two 
even  more  popular  sects,  which  together  go  by  the  name  of 
Jodo  or  Happy  Land  sects,  teaching  salvation  by  faith  in 
Amida.  These  sects  substitute,  for  knowledge  and  illumi- 
nation as  means  of  salvation,  simple  faith  or  faith  combined 
with  its  expression  in  ejaculation.  But,  and  this  induce- 
ment was  even  stronger  than  the  simple  means  of  salvation, 
the  happiness  promised  to  the  faithful  was  no  longer  the 
abstruse  joy  of  union  with  an  incomprehensible  all-entity  but 
the  sensuous  joy  of  a  heavenly  paradise.  This  belief  is 
based  on  a  Buddhist  text  describing  future  felicity  in  ma- 
terial terms,  and  the  Buddha  here  is  regarded  as  (Amida) 
Amitabha  or  Amitayus  (Limitless  Glory,  Limitless  Life). 
The  believer  looks  forward  to  the  Happy  Land,  Sukhavati, 
to  which  he  may  attain  hereafter  by  merit  and  faith,  ex- 
pressing his  faith  in  the  words  "Bow  to  Amida,"  whose 
grace  will  bring  him  to  the  Happy  Land  where  Amida  will 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  297 

meet  his  soul.1  This  is  the  pietistic  religion  of  pure  Jodo, 
founded  (1133-1212  A.  D.)  by  Genku  (Honen)  as  a  reform, 
for  Honen  was  originally  of  the  Tendai  sect,  which  saved 
only  the  elect,  while  Jodo  saves  all  believers.2 

A  little  later  this  reform  was  itself  slightly  reformed  by 
Shinran  (Hanyen;  1173-1262),  whose  knowledge  of  the- 
ology was  doubtless  inborn,  for  he  claimed  descent  from  a 
Japanese  god.  He  was  a  pupil  of  Honen  who,  though  fa- 
mous for  saintliness,  suffered  from  the  jealousy  of  the  ortho- 
dox and  was  banished ;  some  of  his  followers  were  slain. 
Undaunted  by  this  precedent,  however,  Shinran  renewed  the 
evangel,  only  simplifying  it  a  little  more,  so  that  he  felt 
obliged  to  call  his  sect  the  Jodo  Shin-shu,  or  True  Jodo  Sect. 
This  re-reformed  sect  abandoned  even  the  "  bow  to  Amida  " 
formula  as  a  means  of  salvation  and  maintained  that  one 
did  not  have  to  wait  for  death  and  a  greeting  hereafter 
from  Amida  to  become  sanctified  ;  but  Amida  is  found  in  life 
in  the  soul  of  whosoever  has  faith  in  him.  This  creed  found 
favour  with  the  Shoguns  and  the  common  people,  who  be- 
came converted  in  too  large  numbers  to  be  expelled.  Faith, 
not  virtues,  was  the  shibboleth  of  the  sect.  At  present  it 
has  ten  sub-sects  and  nearly  twenty  thousand  temples,  be- 
ing the  most  popular  and  numerous  of  all  the  sects,  though 
the  Zen  is  a  close  rival.  The  Shin-shu  (as  it  is  usually 
called,  though  it  is  also  termed  Ikko  and  Monto,  "gate") 
is  really  a  Protestant  theistic  church,  which  relies  on  "  the 
merits  of  another "  and  on  faith  as  means  of  salvation. 
Faith  brings  change  of  heart  and  so  cleanses  it  of  sin. 
Shinran,  like  Luther,  shocked  the  church-world  by  marry- 
ing and  his  monks  follow  his  example,  marrying  and  even 
eating  meat,  a  practice  abhorred  of  all  Buddhists  except 

1  Snkhavati  means  "happy"   (land).    It  is  erroneously  rendered 
"pure"  by  those  (and  others)   who  think  of  "a  land  of  pure  de- 
light."    Sukha  does  not  even  imply  pure;  it  is  joy,  happiness,  the 
antithesis  of  duhkha,  pain,  misery  (never  impurity).     For  the  texts, 
see  SEE.  xlix. 

2  The  essence  of  this  creed  was  discovered  by  Honen  in  the  writ- 
ings of  the  Chinese  monk  Zendo  (Santao). 


298  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Buddha.  The  disciples  of  this  teacher  need  not  study  Vairo- 
cana,  the  mystic  sunflower  of  pantheistic  divinity,  centred 
in  petals  bearing  the  name  of  Amitabha,  Manjusri,  Avalo- 
kiteshvara,  Maitreya,  and  other  Buddhas  and  Bodhisats,  as 
taught  in  Shingon,  nor  must  they  pass  through  three  grades 
of  wisdom.  They  need  only  lead  a  moral  life  and  have 
faith  in  Amida.  Even  Jodo  demands  that  meritorious  deeds 
should  back  up  faith,  be  it  only  the  merit  of  repeating  the 
"  bow  to  Amida  "  formula ;  but  the  Shin  teaches  that  faith 
alone  is  necessary  and  then  Amida,  realized  in  the  heart,  is 
within  oneself,  not,  as  in  Jodo,  waiting  to  welcome  one,  after 
death,  to  the  Happy  Land. 

As  Honen  got  his  pietistic  inspiration  in  regard  to  faith 
while  reading  Zendo's  works,  and  as  Zendo  lived  in  China, 
where  Nestorians  were  settled  in  635  A.  D.,  some  have 
even  thought  that  the  Happy  Land  sects  derive  from  Chris- 
tianity, an  intrinsically  improbable  thesis  in  this  form, 
since  they  are  based  on  a  text  which,  older  than  Chinese 
Buddhism,  easily  lends  itself  to  the  application  made  of  it 
by  both  sects.  The  Shin  use  a  rosary,  but  this  was  im- 
ported from  India.  It  is  the  leading  sect  in  the  care  of 
the  lowly  and  the  only  sect  which  "  provides  a  way  of  sal- 
vation for  women."  The  metaphysicians  of  this  sect  main- 
tain their  belief  in  an  immanent  (not  a  personal)  divinity, 
and  assert  that  the  common  conception  of  Amida  is  only 
for  the  benefit  of  those  unable  to  understand  truth.  But, 
to  the  mass  of  worshippers,  Amida  is  practically  saviour 
and  God.  They  are  well-nigh  monotheistic ;  they  are  saved 
by  the  grace  of  God  and  live  with  him  in  Paradise  for  ever. 
In  other  words,  the  people  of  Japan  have  gone  through 
the  same  stages  and  come  out  at  the  same  place  as  have 
the  common  people  of  India  and  elsewhere,  to  whom  re- 
ligion without  God  and  Heaven  is  meaningless.  In  this 
particular  the  Shin  stands  in  sharp  'contrast  with  the  Zen, 
which  ignores  God  and  promises  nothing  as  to  a  future  life. 
In  another,  outer,  particular  it  resembles  Zen;  for  it  also 
is  a  military  religion  beloved  of  soldiers,  and  as  a  church 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  299 

militant  has  interfered  with  effect  in  politics.  Jodo  recog- 
nizes other  divine  forms,  notably  that  of  Kuannon,  the 
goddess  *  of  mercy,  whose  seven  or  more,  even  thirty-three, 
images  are  often  found  in  Buddhist  temples.  Yet  in  this 
regard  the  Jodo  merely  retains  that  background  of  poly- 
theism which  lies  behind  all  Oriental  pantheism  and  theism. 
Finally  it  may  be  observed  that  in  both  Happy  Land  sects 
the  distinction  between  the  moral  code  of  the  layman  and 
that  of  the  monk,  which  dates  from  the  beginning  of  Bud- 
dhism, is  definitively  abandoned. 

The  last  important  sect  of  which  we  have  to  speak  is  that 
of  (Rencho)  Nichiren  (1222-1282  A.  D.),  Very  different 
estimates  of  his  character  have  been  made.  To  one  scholar, 
his  sect  is  "  the  most  superstitious  and  bigoted  of  Japanese 
Buddhist  sects."  2  To  another,  Nichiren  was  a  great  apos- 
tle of  righteousness.  The  sect  arose  at  a  time  when  Kub- 
lai  Khan  was  threatening  to  destroy  Japan  and  Nichiren 
came  into  notice  first  as  a  prophet  of  evil,  which  might  be 
prevented  if  the  people  were  converted  to  the  truth  as  he 
saw  it.  They  had  sinned,  said  Nichiren,  in  adopting  Shin- 
gonism,  which  was  mixed  with  Shintoism  and  Hinduism  and 
led  merely  to  sorcery.  Again  he  opposed  the  cult  of  Amida, 
who  had  usurped  the  place  of  Buddha,  the  formalism  of 
the  Ritsu  school,  and  the  "  devilish  "  religion  of  the  Zen. 
He  took  as  his  guide  the  scripture  called  the  Lotus  of  the 
True  Law  (or  Perfect  Truth,  as  he  termed  it),  which  had 
been  rightly  presented  by  Dengyo  before  it  was  misunder- 

1  Kuannon  is  now  the  goddess  of  mercy  and  is  one  of  the  most 
beloved  of  Japanese  divinities,   answering  in  this  capacity  to  the 
Virgin  Mary  as  the  merciful.     She  really  is  a  male    (or  sexless) 
divinity   and   was    so    depicted    when   first   introduced    into    China, 
where  she  or  he  represents  Avalokiteshvara  and  as  such,  a  Buddhist 
figure,   deserves   a  place   in   the  church,   which  cannot  be   said   of 
many  other  divinities  adopted  by  the  Buddhists  and  converted  into 
church  dignitaries.     Chujo  Hime,  an  early  Buddhist  nun,   famous 
for    her   pious    tapestry,    is    now    regarded    as    an    incarnation    of 
Kuannon.     On  the  Chinese  form,  see  above,  p.  270. 

2  A  judgment  made   by   a   nati\;e   and   cited   by   Chamberlain   in 
Things  Japanese,  London,  1890,  p.  116. 


300  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

stood,  and  his  confession  of  faith  was  simply  to  pronounce 
its  title.  Nichiren  preached  with  fierce  religious  zeal  and 
if  he  is  mocked  as  a  revivalist  who  has  "  deified  even  mud," 
it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  he  also  taught  what  Buddha 
taught,  not  salvation  by  the  grace  of  Amida,  but  that  each 
one  must  work  out  his  own  salvation.  To  Nichiren,  this 
was  accomplished  by  observing  the  law,  by  self-examination, 
by  reflecting  on  the  blessings  vouchsafed  to  the  true  be- 
liever, and  by  constant  prayer.  One  must  not  only  know 
but  live  the  truth,  which  is  eternal,  as  its  revealer  is  eternal. 
He  believed  himself  to  be  a  reincarnation  of  an  ancient 
saint;  he  was  a  mystic;  Buddha  manifests  himself  in  trees 
and  grass,  in  the  whole  universe;  but  Buddha  is  Lord  and 
Father  of  all;  we  are  his  children;  religien  is  the  realiza- 
tion of  this  truth  and  of  the  Buddha-nature  in  ourselves. 
"  Behold  the  kingdom  of  God  is  within  you."  Surely  we 
cannot  condemn  this  teacher  as  a  fanatic  demagogue,1 
though  his  intolerance  was  not  in  the  spirit  of  ancient 
Buddhism. 

The  remaining  sects  are  small  and  unimportant,  though 
the  native  theistic  Yudsu  Nembutsu  (u  Bow  to  Buddha") 
sect  has  358  temples  and  the  Ji 2  has  515  temples.  It 
was  not  till  three  centuries  after  the  founder  of  the  last 
of  these  sects  that  reviving  Shinto  began  also  to  divide 
into  sects,  to  the  number  of  about  a  dozen.  None  of 
these  is  anything  more  than  an  adaptation  of  Shinto  to 
Buddhism  or  an  adaptation  of  Chinese  philosophy  to  Shinto. 
One  of  these  is  based  upon  the  philosophy  of  Chu  Hi 
combined  with  Shingon  Buddhism  and  another  reverts  to 
the  Chinese  Yi-King.  These  two  sects,  the  Suiga  and 

1  There  are  now  seven  sub-sects,  5066  temples,  and  a  great  multi- 
tude of  followers  of  Nichiren's  Hokko-shu.     For  a  sympathetic  ac- 
count,   see    Anesaki,    Nichiren    the    Buddhist   Prophet,    Cambridge, 
Mass.,    1916;    for   one    less    appreciative,    Griffis,    The   Religion   of 
Japan,  New  York,  1895,  p.  281.    The  Kamakura  Zen,  Jodo,  Shin,  and 
Nichiren  sects  represent  distinctively  Japanese  Buddhism. 

2  The  Ji-shu,  founded  1275  A.  D.  by  Ippen,  uses  the  same  ritual  as 
that  of  the  Tendai  and  Shingon,  but  is  closely  related  to  the  Jodo. 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  3O1 

Deguchi  sects,  belong  to  the  seventeenth  century.  An 
earlier  sect  is  that  called  the  Jikko.  It  resolves  Izanagi 
and  Izanami  into  the  male  and  female  forms  of  one  abso- 
lute deity,  who  resides  in  the  Fuji  mountain,  which  should 
be  worshipped  as  the  intellectual  centre  of  the  universe. 
Comment  is  superfluous.  A  Japanese  proverb  says  "  when 
folly  passes  by,  reason  draws  back."  One  of  the  latest  of 
these  eclectic  sects  is  that  called  Shingakuha.  It  arose  in 
the  eighteenth  century  and  teaches  "  heart-culture,"  inducing 
religion  by  the  use  of  colloquial  language,  humour,  etc. 

Among  most  of  the  Buddhist  sects  there  has  been  an 
easy  tolerance  of  gods  not  their  own  but  drawn  into  their 
fold  by  naming  them  saints  of  Buddhism.  These  gods  go 
by  the  general  title  of  Gongen,  temporary  manifestations 
of  Buddha.  Thus  Sarasvati,  the  wife  of  Brahman,  is  re- 
vered as  Benten,  goddess  of  sea  and  sky.  She  appears  also 
as  one  of  the  Seven  Happy  Gods  of  Fortune,  who,  histor- 
ically, may  be  Kubera,  the  Hindu  god  of  wealth,  Sarasvati, 
Mahakala  (Time  as  god),  the  Buddhist  Maitreya,  two 
forms  perhaps  representing  Lao-tse,1  and  one  Shinto  god. 
This  group  of  gods  exorcises  demons  by  means  of  beans, 
hated  by  demons,  on  New  Year's  eve  and  serves  as  a 
bugaboo  to  children.  Another  god  is  Daruma,  Hindu 
Dharma,  god  of  justice,  who  renounced  his  eyelids  to  see 
better,  a  form  of  the  Hindu  "  unwinking  gods,"  but  is 
degraded  at  present  into  an  image,  having  a  pipe  in  his 
mouth  and  serving  as  a  sign  for  tobacconists.  An  earlier 
figure  is  Jizo,  of  the  eighth  century,  who  compassionates 
mothers  and  children.  The  Tendai  sect  tolerated  the  wor- 
ship of  the  Two  Kings  (Ni-o),  who  are  really  Indra  and 
Brahman  disguised  as  Gongen.  Ema,  or  Emma-o,  god  of 
the  dead  and  ruler  of  hills,  seems  to  be  a  god  of  Buddhism. 
Statesmen  and  generals  are  also  deified  or  canonized, 
leyasu,  the  implacable  but  great  unifier  of  Japan,  notorious 

1  Griffis,  op.  cit.,  p.  218.  The  Japanese  names  are  Bishamon,  Dai- 
koku,  Ebisu,  Fukurokuju,  Hotei,  jurojin,  and  Benten  or  Benzaiten 
(serpent-symbol).  The  identifications  are  not  assured. 


302  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

as  the  persecutor  of  Christians  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
was  a  member  of  the  Jodo  sect,  which  was  favoured  by  the 
Shoguns,  and  he  is  now  glorified  or  deified  as  Toshu-gu, 
Great  Light  of  the  East,  or  Gongen  Sama  (in  idol-form). 
Takamori,  the  desperate  upholder  of  feudalism  against  the 
new  regime  (died  in  1877),  is  now  tne  regent  of  Mars. 
The  earlier  rebel  Masakado  on  dying  proved  so  malevolent 
a  ghost  that  his  spirit  was  appeased  by  making  him  a  god, 
till,  in  the  revolution  of  1868,  when  he  fell  into  disfavour, 
his  idol  was  hacked  to  pieces,  and  his  divine  office  was 
handed  over  to  a  Shinto  god.  Other  idols  commonly  found 
in  Japanese  temples  are  those  of  the  500  early  Hindu  saints 
or  Arhats  (Rakan  in  Japanese).  Some  of  these  at  least 
really  lived,  so  that  they  may  be  set  down  as  the  first  of 
Buddhists  exalted  to  a  quasi  divinity ;  but  owing  to  the 
nebulous  character  of  gods  in  Japan  it  must  never  be  for- 
gotten that  to  be  made  a  "  god  "  is  a  small  matter,  a  decora- 
tion, so  to  speak.  With  men  it  amounts  at  most  only  to 
canonization.  Like  most  Japanese  practices  it  was  adopted 
from  the  Chinese,  and,  as  in  China,  even  scholars  are  thus 
dignified.  So  the  wise  imperial  councillor  Michizane,  the 
minister  of  the  emperor  Uda  (893-898  A.  D.),  was  canon- 
ized as  Ten j in  Sara,  the  heavenly  Patron  of  Literature ; 
he  now  has  many  idols.  Mr.  Benj.  S.  Lyman,  an  American 
scholar  and  engineer  of  Philadelphia,  who  developed  the 
Japanese  mining  industry  forty  years  ago,  has  recently  been 
made  "  god  of  metals." 

The  immense  importance  of  Buddhism  in  the  cultural 
and  religious  evolution  of  Japan  cannot  be  overestimated. 
"  Almost  every  branch  of  industrial  and  artistic  develop- 
ment owes  something  to  the  influence  of  the  [Buddhist] 
creed."  l  It  gave  the  Japanese  a  culture  and  religion  which 
have  had  a  lasting  effect  for  good.  At  the  same  time  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  all  the  Buddhist  sects  lost  their 
spiritual  value  as  they  became  mobs  of  hired  soldiers  fight- 

1  Professor  Asakawa  in  Japan,  History  of  Nations,  Philadelphia, 
1906,  p.  33- 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  3°3 

ing  for  or  against  a  political  chieftain.  In  the  fourteenth 
century  the  monks  became  mere  militia.  Sect  fought  with 
sect  and  especially  the  Shin  and  Nichiren  sect- feuds  cost 
the  lives  of  thousands  of  monks.  The  only  sects  which 
were  not  entirely  transformed  by  military  activity  were  the 
Zen  (Soto  and  Rinzai)  sects  whom  the  Ashikagas  supported. 
They,  almost  alone,  upheld  religion  and  learning  in  that 
troubled  era. 

But  what  Buddhism  accomplished  ethically  is  another 
matter.  In  the  period  of  degeneration  (1000-1200  A.  D.) 
the  Buddhist  monasteries,  like  those  of  the  same  period 
in  Europe,  were  centres  of  vice  and  debauchery  and 
Buddha  himself,  in  the  docetic  interpretation  toward  which 
the  Mahayana  leaned,  could  offer  no  commanding  personal 
model  to  which  appeal  might  be  made  in  favour  of  a  moral 
code,  especially  as  even  the  learner's  own  personality  was 
questioned.  Despite  these  disadvantages  theoretically,  the 
Buddhist  had  a  high  moral  code,  but  its  practical  strength 
was  due  to  the  infusion  of  Confucian  ethics. 

Christianity  was  brought  into  Japan  by  Xavier  in  1549 
and  found  at  first  no  opposition,  owing  to  the  anarchical 
state  of  the  country,  in  which  the  Buddhists  had  had  a 
hand,  so  much  so  indeed  that  the  war  which  caused  the 
overthrow  of  the  Togashi  family  goes  by  the  name  of  the 
Shin  war.  It  was  at  this  time  that  the  Jesuits  arrived  and 
their  initial  success  was  due  to  this  political  reason.  For 
Nobunaga,  who  suppressed  the  Shogunate  for  thirty  years, 
would  have  been  glad  to  suppress  the  Buddhists  also.  He 
did  in  fact  burn  the  temple  of  Enriakuji,  really  a  fort 
filled  with  an  army  of  Buddhist  priests,  who  had  pillaged 
the  country  and  acknowledged  no  authority  for  half  a  mil- 
lennium. Nobunaga  was  a  member  of  the  ancient  Taira- 
Oda  family  but  he  was  not  himself  a  Shogun,  though  he 
formed  an  alliance  with  (the  Tokugawa)  leyasu  in  the 
interest  of  the  imperial  power.  The  only  reason  he  sup- 
ported the  Christians  was  that  he  wished  to  weaken  the 
secular  power  of  the  Buddhists.  Under  imperial  patronage 


304  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

of  this  kind  it  is  not  surprising  to  learn  that  within  forty 
years  there  were  from  two  to  three  hundred  thousand 
Christian  converts.  Most  of  them  were  ordered  by  their 
Daimios  to  be  converted,  sometimes  "  within  a  day."  The 
Jesuits,  however,  naturally  saw  in  this  unexpected  catholicity 
on  the  part  of  the  Japanese  the  hand  of  God.  But  mis- 
sionary success  lasted  only  till  the  Tokugawa  Shoguns 
began  to  fear  that  Spain  was  seeking  under  guise  of  reli- 
gion to  make  Japan  a  Spanish  province.  For  by  this  time 
the  Japanese  had  become  acquainted  with  Portuguese  and 
Dutch  traders  and  knew  what  Spanish  ambition  meant. 
The  result  was  that  even  in  1687  an  edict  of  Hideyoshi1 
banished  all  foreign  religions,  the  short-lived  patronage  of 
Christianity  ceased,  and  the  foreign  sect  was  prohibited  by 
the  Tokugawa.  leyasu  then  began  a  systematic  persecu- 
tion of  the  sect  (in  1614),  obliging  converts  to  recant  by 
trampling  on  the  crucifix  and  meting  out  to  the  Jesuits  the 
same  measure  they  themselves  had  adopted  toward  Euro- 
pean heretics,  namely  torture  as  barbarous  as  that  of  the 

1  At  the  death  of  Nobunaga  in  1582  his  chief  officer  Hideyoshi 
(a  man  of  low  birth)  became  the  most  powerful  man  in  Japan, 
leyasu  (of  the  Tokugawa  family)  envied  his  position  and  at  first 
rebelled  against  him;  but  as  each  of  these  leaders  feared  the  other, 
they  eventually  laid  aside  their  differences  and  Hideyoshi,  highly 
honoured  by  the  emperor,  became  chancellor  of  the  empire.  He 
conquered  Korea  and  China  before  he  died  in  1598  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  leyasu,  who,  refraining  from  foreign  conquests,  devoted 
himself  to  founding  the  fortunes  of  his  own  Tokugawa  family  and 
establishing  a  Shogunate  that  gave  lasting  peace  to  his  country.  It 
was  not  till  Nobunaga,  Hideyoshi,  and  leyasu  had  established  peace 
that  Neo-Confucianism,  in  the  Shushi  and  Oyomei  (Wang-Yang- 
Min,  above,  p.  265)  forms,  became  fully  established  in  Japan.  The 
Shushi  school,  recognized  as  orthodox  in  China  by  the  Ming  em- 
perors (1402-1644),  was  made  the  authorized  system  by  the  Toku- 
gawa Shoguns.  It  was  encouraged  especially  because  it  promoted 
loyalty.  The  Oyomei  school  trusts  more  to  intuition  than  to  knowl- 
edge (compare  Zen).  A  third  school  of  Neo-Confucianism  is  that 
known  as  the  Classical  school  of  Yamaga  Soko  (father  of  Bushido) 
and  Ito  Jinsai.  It  stresses  emotion  but  professes  to  go  back  to 
Confucius.  A  fourth,  Eclectic,  school  is  a  combination  of  all  exist- 
ing Confucian  schools.  See  A.  K.  Reischauer,  Studies  in  Japanese 
Buddhism,  New  York,  1917,  p.  1431. 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  3°5 

Inquisition.  The  persecution  even  in  Japan  was  not  all 
on  one  side.  Daimios,  who  had  been  converted  by  the 
Jesuits,  persecuted  such  of  their  vassals  as  refused  to  be- 
come Christian,1  and  this  undoubtedly  strengthened  the  sus- 
picion that  the  "  Kirishitan  "  were  endeavouring  to  make 
Japan  a  Spanish  dependency,  as  was  charged  by  the  Dutch, 
leyasu  was  a  national  reformer  and  a  statesman  of  high 
order,  who  rescued  Japan  from  internal  disorders  that  had 
raged  for  two  hundred  years  and  gave  her  a  peace  which 
lasted  for  two  hundred  more.  His  measures  were  harsh 
even  toward  his  own  countrymen,  for  he  deliberately  im- 
poverished all  the  Daimios  in  order  to  weaken  them  and 
thus  preserve  the  country  from  their  incessant  contentions. 
He  permitted  the  imperial  power  to  retain  little  real  power 
and  established  a  Shogunate  which  endured  till  1868.  In 
these  important  political  activities  the  suppression  of  Chris- 
tians, who  had  shown  arrogance  and  intolerance,  was  only 
an  item.  He  died  two  years  after  the  persecution  was 
started.  Besides  the  Jesuits,  the  Dominicans,  Augustinians, 
and  Franciscans  had  founded  missionary  settlements  in 
Japan.  Converted  Daimios  had  even  sent  out  investigators 
to  visit  Spain  and  Italy.  They  remained  eight  years  and 
visited  the  Pope  (1582-1590).  A  similar  expedition  of 
Christian  Samurai  started  in  1613  and  returned  in  1620, 
after  another  visit  to  the  Pope.  Despite  the  (1587)  edict 
of  banishment,  Christians  continued  to  enter  the  country 
disguised  as  merchants  and  for  that  reason  were  all  the 
more  assumed  to  be  spies  of  Spain.  Finally  they  took  sides 
with  the  enemies  of  the  now  all-powerful  Tokugawa  family, 
and  were  implicated  in  an  open  rebellion  (1637-39)  m  be- 
half of  Masudo  Shiro,  Tokisada,  who  was  desirous  of  be- 
coming the  ruler  of  the  empire.  In  order  to  win  support 
among  the  farmers  and  common  people  he  let  it  be  known 
that  he  performed  miracles  and  was  the  "  heavenly  mes- 
senger "  prophesied  by  Xavier,  and  destined  to  establish 

1  Nobunaga   destroyed    Buddhist   temples   and   killed   the   priests 
with  their  women  and  children. 


306  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Christian  supremacy.  Supported  by  the  Christians  he  seized 
a  province,  murdered  its  governor,  and  set  up  an  independ- 
ent principality.  He  was  overthrown  and  his  supporters, 
among  them  the  Christians,  were  massacred.  Christian 
thus  became  synonymous  with  rebel  and  traitor;  but  a 
Christian  might  evade  death  by  becoming  a  Buddhist.  Not 
only  missionaries  but  all  Europeans  as  such  were  now 
suspect.  No  European  books  were  allowed  to  be  brought 
into  the  country  and  all  ports  were  closed  except  to  the 
Dutch.  They,  because  they  had  never  been  missionaries 
but  on  the  contrary  had  rather  aided  the  authorities  against 
the  Jesuits,  were  still  permitted  to  enter  by  one  port.  It 
is  well  to  consider  these  political  data.  They  palliate  some- 
what the  crime  of  persecution,  though  they  cannot  undo  the 
horrors  enacted  during  fifty  years.  In  1716,  the  six-year 
census,  called  "  examination  of  faith,"  was  instituted  and 
given  into  the  hands  of  the  Buddhists,  who  by  means  of 
this  register  were  able  to  keep  track  of  and  suppress  most 
of  the  genuine  converts  to  Christianity.  Yet  in  1865  some 
of  the  descendants  of  the  early  Christians  were  discovered 
still  clinging  to  the  signs  of  their  old  faith.  Four  thousand 
of  them  suffered  imprisonment  for  their  fidelity  (1867). 

The  changes  during  the  last  century  have  been  mainly 
along  political  lines,  the  re-establishment  of  the  Shinto  rit- 
ual,1 the  exclusion  and  readmission  of  Christianity.  No 
notable  novelty  has  been  introduced  except  that  of  inter- 
preting Shinto  in  various  unhistorical  ways  by  way  of  ad- 
justing it  to  modern  needs.  Thus  in  1849  Shinto  was  first 
taught  as  a  monotheistic  religion  by  Kurozumi,  who  re- 
garded the  sun-goddess  (Heaven-Shining  One)  as  God  (qua 
the  sole  source  of  vitality),  with  whom  man  should  seek 
to  be  in  communion.  Both  Buddhism  and  Shinto  were 
formally  disestablished  in  1884.  Buddhism  had  been  abol- 
ished as  a  factor  in  the  state  religion  after  the  restoration 
of  imperial  authority  in  1868.  But  the  Buddhists  were  still 

1  This  was  not  intended  as  a  reassertion  of  Shinto  religion  as  the 
State  religion,  but  it  seems  to  the  people  to  imply  this. 


RELIGIONS  OF  JAPAN  3°7 

allowed  to  preach  patriotism  and  humanitarianism  (1872). 
Freedom  of  religious  thought  was  granted  to  the  people  and 
in  1875  the  Doshisha  theological  school  was  founded  by 
Neeshima,  who  had  been  a  student  in  America.  Subse- 
quently, there  was  a  temporary  union  of  the  three  older 
cults,  Shinto,  Buddhism,  and  Confucianism,  called  the  "  Way 
of  uniting  three  religions,"  to  oppose  Christianity.  Since 
the  war  with  China  (1894-95)  and  that  with  Russia  (1904- 
05)  the  national  spirit  has  reawakened  the  warrior-spirit  and 
there  has  been  a  strong  tendency  to  regard  Shinto  as  the 
national  religion,  though  the  modern  followers  of  this  "  an- 
cestor-worship "  do  not  themselves  believe  in  a  future  life. 
Morality  is  on  the  whole  taking  the  place  of  religion  among 
the  educated  classes.1 

Prophecy  is  no  part  of  history,  but  as  Japan  is  the  only 
great  nation  without  a  religion  recognized  by  the  State  or 
generally  acknowledged  by  the  people,  it  is  a  tempting  field 
for  speculation.  Its  statesmen  inculcate  the  religion  of 
loyalty.  Its  philosophers  believe  in  a  Oneness  which 
transcends  human  categories.  Its  plain  people  are  idolaters 
or  agnostics,  or  in  theistic  sects  recognize  Amida  as  God. 
Yet  in  this  regard  the  Christian  missionary  objects:  "they 
cannot  conceive  of  God  as  a  person."  But  in  such  a  state- 
ment "  God "  translates  Buddha  as  the  Absolute  and  it 
would  perhaps  be  tempting,  if  temerarious,  to  inquire  how 
many  Christians  regard  The  Absolute  as  a  personal  God. 
What  is  significant  is  that  Japanese  Buddhism  regards 
Amida  simply  as  the  highest  personal  expression  of 
Buddha,  that  is,  as  the  highest  conception  of  God  humanity 
can  have,  because  the  Absolute  cannot  be  conceived  at  all. 
God,  in  fact,  to  the  Japanese  theologian  appears  in  a 
trinity,  first  as  the  Absolute,  second  as  personified  Mercy 
and  Wisdom  in  the  form  of  Amida,  and  third  as  the 
historical  Buddha  (or  any  one  of  the  many  Buddhas). 
Salvation,2  obtained  in  the  old  sects  by  "turning  from 

1Anesaki,  Religious  History  of  Japan,  Tokyo,  1907,  p.  47. 

2  Salvation  in  early  Buddhism  means  escape  from  eternal  life ;  in 


308  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ignorance  and  opening"  (the  mind  to  truth;  tenmai 
kaigo  is  the  formula),  is  in  the  theistic  sects,  as  it  seems 
fair  to  call  them,  though  some  missionaries  strenuously 
object  to  the  term,  a  matter  of  grace  extended  to  a  be- 
liever: "All  the  doctrines  of  Buddhism  are  grounded  in 
mercy."  That  this  saying  may  lead  to  ethical  laxity  is  true ; 
so  Lutherism  actually  led  to  antinomianism.  The  Japanese 
say,  "  He  whose  heart  is  pure,  to  him  the  heart  of  every 
being  is  pure."  May  we  not  conversely  say  also :  He  who 
has  been  ready  to  take  as  pure  religion  the  best  of  every 
religion,  his  heart  is  religiously  pure?  But  there  is  an- 
other Japanese  saying:  "If  the  heart  be  pure,  the  Way 
will  be  open."  This  Way  must  combine  the  ethics  of 
loyalty  with  the  faith  of  philosophy. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Hisho  Saito,  History  of  Japan,  London,  1912. 

G.  W.  Knox,  Development  of  Religion  in  Japan,  New  York, 

1907. 

T.  Harada,  The  Faith  of  Japan,  New  York,  1914. 
B.  H.  Chamberlain,  Kojiki,  Tokyo,  1906. 
K.    Florenz,    Geschichte    der   Japanischen   Litteratur,    Leipzig, 

1906;  Japanische  Mythologie,   1901;  Nihongi,   1903. 
W.  G.  Ashton,  Shinto  the  Way  of  the  Gods,  London,  1905. 
I.  O.  Nitobe,  Bushido,  New  York,  1905. 
Sir  E.  Satow,  The  Revival  of  Pure  Shinto,  in  Transactions  of 

the  Asiatic  Society  of  Japan,   Yokohama,   iii,  Appendix; 

Japanese  Rituals,  ibid,  vii  and  ix. 

Arthur  Lloyd,  The  Creed  of  Half  Japan,  London,  1911. 
Bunyiu  Nanjio,  A  Short  History  of  the  Twelve  Buddhist  Sects, 

Tokyo,  1886. 
A.  K.  Reischauer,  Studies  in  Japanese  Buddhism,  New  York, 

1917.    This  has  the  best  description  of  the  Buddhist  sects. 

the  theistic  sects  it  means  admission  to  Heaven  as  a  friend  of  God. 
The  Karma  complex  (substitute  for  soul)  of  the  early  Buddhist 
has  also  become  purely  psychic  or  animistic  in  these  sects. 


CHAPTER  SEVENTEEN 

THE  RELIGION   OF  EGYPT 

WE  turn  now  to  a  group  of  religions  all  more  or  less  inti- 
mately related,  the  Mediterranean-Mesopotamian  group, 
composed  of  Egyptian,  Semitic,  and  Aryan  elements  inter- 
woven to  such  a  degree  that  the  religions  of  Babylon  and 
Rome,  of  Abydos  and  Athens,  etc.,  cannot  be  regarded  as 
quite  independent,  and  yet  it  is  difficult  to  determine  in  how 
far  each  is  dependent  upon  the  other.  Racial  lines  become 
rather  unimportant.  The  southern  Aryans  had  some  con- 
nexion with  those  of  the  North,  but,  in  the  South  the 
Aryans  were  merged  in  the  older  Mediterranean  civiliza- 
tion ;  while  in  the  East  the  connexion  between  Aryan  and 
Semite  was  of  the  closest.  We  shall  begin  with  the  oldest 
of  the  Mediterranean  religions  and  then  take  up  the  oldest 
Semitic  branch  and,  after  studying  the  other  religions  of 
this  complex  in  their  natural  order,  irrespective  of  race, 
come  to  an  end  with  the  religion  which,  representing  the 
union  of  Aryan  and  Semitic,  is  also  the  logical  close  of  the 
series,  since  it  is,  as  it  were,  the  full  expression  of  all  that  is 
enduring  in  the  preceding  religions. 

The  religion  of  Egypt  appears  to  be  an  indigenous  crea- 
tion. In  its  later  stages  we  have  to  do  with  foreign  types, 
such  as  the  Nubian  god  Dedun  and  the  protecting  dwarf- 
god  Bes,  who  may  have  come  from  Somali-land.  Espe- 
cially in  the  Delta  was  there  Semitic  influence  sufficient  to 
add  to  the  Egyptian  pantheon  the  forms  of  Baal  and  Astarte. 
But  these  are  easily  distinguishable  from  the  native  gods. 
The  earlier  pantheon  contained  the  products  of  different 
Egyptian  localities  gradually  fused  through  migration  and 

309 


310  (          THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

politics  into  closely  related  or  even  indistinguishable  figures. 
That  Egypt  received  its  mythology  from  Asia  has  often  been 
suggested  but  never  proved.1 

The  indigenous  religion,  in  distinction  from  mythology, 
was  but  a  phase  of  African  religion  in  general;  since  the 
Egyptians  retained  many  primitive  elements  in  their  religious 
customs  and  in  their  animal  gods.  A  number  of  Sudanese 
beliefs  and  practices,  even  religious  symbols,  are  like  those 
of  the  Egyptians.  But  much  in  this  field  is  too  specula- 
tive to  be  regarded  <as  assured,  and  at  present  it  will  be  bet- 
ter to  assume  that  Egyptian  belief  is  not  imported,  though 
it  may  to  a  certain  extent  have  been  inherited  from  earlier 
conditions,  and  it  may  be  that  the  pre-dynastic  inhabitants 
differed  racially  from  the  later  in  degree,  having  less  admix- 
ture than  those,  say,  of  the  sixth  dynasty  (c.  2500  B.  c.). 

One  of  the  great  gods  of  Egypt  was  Ptah,  the  divine 
sculptor,  who,  by  uttering  their  names,  conceived  and  made 
the  world  and  the  gods.  He  himself  was  the  god  of  Mem- 
phis and  as  early  as  the  Pyramid  age,  that  is  from  3000  B.  c. 
to  2475,  was  already  extolled  as  the  creator.  His  site,  it  is 
said,  was  called  Hat-ka-Ptah,  "  temple  of  the  soul  (or 
genius)  of  Ptah,"  pronounced  by  foreign  tongues  aikypta, 
Aegyptos.  It  is  fitting  that  Egypt  should  have  received  its 
name  from  a  god  and  the  name  itself,  if  the  etymology 
be  correct,  may  serve  as  a  reminder  that  more  than  two 
thousand  years  before  Christ  a  creator  god  was  recognized 
whose  word,  as  conceived  by  the  heart  (mind),  was  the 
source  of  the  world  and  of  spiritual  power.2  But  cen- 
turies must  have  elapsed  before  so  philosophic  an  explana- 
tion of  creation  was  evolved,  for  behind  the  image  of  this 

1  Prof.  E.  G.  Smith,  in  his  recent  work,  The  Ancient  Egyptians 
and   their  Influence   upon   the   Civilisation   of  Europe,   Cambridge, 
191 1,  seems  to  think  that  an  Armenoid  element  from  Syria  altered 
the  course  of  later  development,  and  that  the  Pyramid  men  were  a 
new  type.     But  it  is  still  questionable  how  sharp  a  line  should  be 
drawn    between    the    Ethiopic    and    Mediterranean    peoples,    and 
whether  a  new  type  arose  in  the  Dynastic  period. 

2  A  similar  creation  is  attributed  to  Thoth,  the  god  of  wisdom 
(see  below). 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  311 

Ptah  stretches  a  long  number  of  years  in  which  the  deity 
was  of  lower  form.  This  lower  form,  nevertheless,  is  also 
of  importance,  since  its  very  antiquity  illustrates  the  fact 
that,  however  far  back  we  trace  Egyptian  history,  we  find, 
a  theogony  and  theology  which  already  foreshadows  the 
system  of  later  millenniums.  The  Egyptians  were,  in  short, 
from  the  beginning  a  religious  people.  Nor  was  theirs  a 
religion  wholly  occupied  with  death  and  sorrow,  as  one 
might  suppose  who  knew  only  the  Book  of  the  Dead  and 
such  documents.  As  Renouf  has  emphasized,  early  reli- 
gious rites  were  accompanied  with  music  and  the  dance, 
not  simply  to  scare  away  demons  but  to  exhilarate  the 
human  worshippers.  Festivals  were  cheerful;  there  were 
gay  songs;  even  dogs  were  trained  to  howl  a  pleasing  mel- 
ody ;  and  in  the  popular  cults  there  was  a  boisterous  natural 
note  which  seems  almost  Hellenic  in  its  mixture  of  religion 
and  sensuousness  untinged  with  grief  and  boldly  joyous, 
the  embodiment  of  pleasure  in  life  rather  than  fear  of 
death.  The  sun  received  offerings  of  fruits  and  flowers, 
not  bloody  sacrifice,  and  hymns  of  joy,  not  funereal  dirges. 
And  if  the  effigy  of  a  corpse  was  exhibited  at  banquets,  as 
Herodotus  tells  us,  it  was  only  that  the  guests  might  not 
forget  to  enjoy  themselves,  while  yet  there  was  time.  Not 
a  mere  reminder  of  sad  things;  but  Eat  and  drink,  for  to- 
morrow ye  die;  therefore  be  merry  now.  Yet  this  may 
imply  scepticism  as  to  the  future,  which  finds  voice  at  an 
early  age  (circa  2000  B.  c.).  Beyond  the  grave,  it  is  said,  is 
"  the  land  that  loves  silence " ;  hence  again,  "  Be  joyful 
now."  In  the  Lay  of  the  Harper,  this  admonition  is  fol- 
lowed by  another:  "  Be  devoted  to  pleasure;  but  be  just; 
love  right,  hate  wrong."  It  is  already  a  moral  religion. 
Charity,  compassion,  gentleness,  forgiveness  are  strictly  en- 
joined. To  show  compassion  to  the  poor,  and  to  be  hon- 
est in  word  as  in  deed,  are  virtues  which  ensure  happiness 
hereafter.  The  funeral  formula  is  en  hotep,  "  in  peace," 
and  this  "  Peace  be  with  thee  "  was  felt  as  an  assurance  as 
well  as  a  benediction  in  the  case  of  the  good.  For  after 


312  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

death  the  god  Osiris  judges  the  soul  according  to  the  rule 
of  morality  thus  formulated.  Its  fate  accords  with  the 
evil  or  good  it  has  done.  Yet  eternal  life  must  be  insured 
by  the  care  of  the  living  descendants,  who  give  nourish- 
ment to  the  dead.  The  ka  or  soul,  image  or  genius  of  a 
man,  is  revered  by  his  family,  who  establish  a  shrine  for 
it  with  regular  offerings,  lustral  water,  etc.,  given  to  the  ka 
every  tenth  day.  Such  is  the  outline  of  this  religion  as  it 
existed  for  centuries.  But  there  was  no  purgatory ;  prayers 
could  not  better  the  condition  of  the  dead.  The  poor  and 
ignorant  had  a  mean  place  hereafter,  yet  they  suffered  no 
punishment  because  of  their  ignorance;  only  sinners  per- 
ished. 

But  before  entering  upon  a  fuller  description  of  this 
religion  it  will  be  necessary  to  trace  in  outline  the  periods 
of  development  to  which  reference  will  constantly  have  to 
be  made.  There  are  great  gaps  in  Egyptian  history  con- 
cerning which  we  know  nothing.1  What  happened  from 
the  VII  to  the  XI  dynasties  (2400  to  2100  B.  c.),  is  a  mat- 
ter of  conjecture.  Doubtful  is  the  relation  between  the 
southern  and  northern  kingdoms,  between  the  native  and 
Hyksos  rulers  (c.  1680  B.  c.),  between  Egyptian  and  foreign 
culture.  There  were  forty-two  provinces  in  Egypt  and 
each  had  its  local  god  or  gods.  But  the  chief  difficulty  in 
the  interpretation  of  the  religion  lies  in  the  antithesis  be- 
tween the  higher  and  lower  forms,  between  the  priestly  and 
bucolic  religion,  that  is,  in  the  internal  rather  than  the  ex- 
ternal factors,  in  the  fusion  and  combination  of  all  these 
great  and  little  gods  of  which  each  section  of  Egypt  had 
an  over-supply.  In  rough  outline  the  history  of  the  land 
begins  with  a  king  called  Menes,  mentioned  by  Herodotus 
(ii,  4,  99)  as  "the  first  mortal  who  reigned  over  Egypt." 
He  was  supposed  to  be  of  Abydos,  of  the  district  This, 

1  Egyptian  chronology  is  based  on  the  statements  made  by 
Manetho  (third  century  B.C.),  who  arranged  the  kings  in  dynasties, 
on  sundry  native  lists  of  kings,  and  on  a  calendar  cycle,  which  may 
have  begun  4240  B.  c.  For  details,  see  Breasted,  History  of  Egypt, 
York,  191 1. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  3X3 

in  upper  Egypt  about  a  hundred  miles  below  Thebes,  which 
Herodotus  says  he  founded,  and  probably  lived  in  the 
fourth  millennium  B.  c.1  The  two  kingdoms  of  upper  and 
lower  Egypt  were  then  united.  The  early  dynasties,  after 
this  perhaps  mythical  king,  are  reckoned  in  groups.  First 
come  the  First  and  Second  dynasties,  about  3400  to  2980 
B.  c.  Then  comes  the  Old  Kingdom  or  the  Pyramid  Age, 
when  Memphis  was  the  capital,  including  dynasties  III  to 
VI,  about  2980  to  2475,  thcil:  is,  the  first  five  hundred  years 
of  the  third  millennium  B.  c.  (other  authorities  give  to  the 
Old  Kingdom  the  dates  2700  to  2000).  To  this  age  be- 
longs the  maker  of  the  greatest  pyramid,  Khufu,  or  Cheops 
as  known  to  the  Greeks.  By  this  time  a  king  was  already 
deified,  namely  Snofru  or  Soris,  last  king  of  the  third 
dynasty,  who  had  fought  in  the  East  (he  also  first  opened 
copper  mines).  Some  scholars  have  supposed  that  he  ex- 
tended his  power  as  far  as  Mt.  Sinai.  Internal  wars  in  all 
probability  account  for  the  gap  till  the  eleventh  dynasty. 
The  XI  and  XII  dynasties,  called  the  Middle  or  Feudal  Age 
(Kingdom)  represent  the  centuries  2160  to  1788  B.C. 
(sometimes  reckoned  from  2000  to  1800  B.C.).  At  this 
time  Thebes  became  most  prominent.  Syria  and  Palestine 
were  known.  Then,  after  two  centuries  of  invasion  (the 
Hyksos  kings),2  followed  the  dynasties  XVIII  to  XX  (first 
half),  about  1580  to  1150  B.  c.,  called  The  Empire.  In  this 
period 3  the  Pharaohs  made  Syria  a  province  of  Egypt. 
Then  came  a  period  of  decadence,  when  the  priestly  power 
got  the  upper  hand  and  the  XXI  dynasty  was  founded  by 
a  priest  of  Amon-Re.  This  period  of  Decadence  extended 
from  dynasty  XX  second  half  to  dynasty  XXV,  about  1150 
to  600  B.  c.  After  this,  the  Restoration,  dynasty  XXVI, 

1  Or  earlier!    His  approximate  date  is  3400  B.C.   (Breasted),  or 
4400  B.C.  (Brugsch),  or  5650  (Wiedemann). 

2  Probably  Semites,  perhaps  Amorites. 

3  The  famous  XIX  dynasty  (1350-1200  B.C.)   includes  Ramses  II 
(1292-1225  B.C.),  who  may  be  the  Pharaoh  of  the  oppression.    The 
XXII  dynasty  was  founded  945  B.C.  by  Sheshonk  (Shishak,  I  Kg. 
xi.  and  xiv.). 


3 H  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

663  to  525  B.  c.,  the  latter  the  date  of  the  Persian  conquest 
by  Cambyses;  followed  by  the  Greek  conquest  of  Alexander 
in  332,  and  by  the  Roman  conquest  in  31  B.  c.  Between  the 
XXI  and  XXVI  dynasties  there  had  already  been  a  suc- 
cession of  foreign  invasions,  Lydian,  Aethiopic,  and  As- 
syrian (all  part  of  the  Decadence,  above). 

From  the  religions  point  of  view  there  are  three  lines  of 
thought  to  be  distinguished  during  this  evolution.  First, 
the  old  belief  of  the  people  in  animal-gods,  which  has  re- 
sulted in  a  confused  mass  of  strange  divinities,  half  human 
in  aspect  and  half  animal.  Second,  the  State  religion  of 
the  sun-god  and  the  belief  that  royal  personages  are  sons 
of  this  god  and  go  to  him  after  death.  Third,  the  belief 
in  Osiris  as  a  power  inimical  to  the  Sun,  an  earth-power 
associated  with  death  but  also  with  the  production  of  life, 
until  this  was  finally  fused  with  the  sun-religion,  which 
then  developed  into  a  monotheism,  about  1375,  when  Amen- 
hotep  IV  gave  up  the  worship  of  the  old  sun-god,  Amon, 
and  instituted  that  of  Aton.  The  great  periods  of  Egyp- 
tian history  are  those  of  the  XII  (begins  c.  2000),  XVIII 
and  XIX  (1350-1200)  dynasties  of  Thebes.  In  the  eight- 
eenth dynasty  Thothmes  (Thutmose)  III  (1501-1447),  who 
owed  his  throne  to  a  conspiracy  of  the  priests  of  Amon, 
practically  ruled  the  then  known  world.  Ramses  I  (1350 
B.C.)  was  the  first  king  of  the  XIX  dynasty.  But  the 
power  of  the  priests  destroyed  the  power  of  the  State  and 
by  i  TOO  B.  c.  the  State  church  ruled  the  Pharaoh. 

Although  we  find  sun-worship  in  Horus-form  and  Re- 
form established  in  the  earliest  period,  the  fact  that  animal- 
gods  were  already  regarded  as  forms  of  the  sun  probably 
shows  that  these  animal-gods  were  older  than  the  sun-god, 
and,  if  so,  older  than  the  other  nature-gods.  Yet  it  is  not 
at  all  certain  that  Sun  and  Nile  were  not  gods  as  primitive 
as  Bull  and  Crocodile.  With  animals  were  worshipped 
stones  and  trees,  and  these  lower,  aboriginal,  deities  had  so 
strong  a  hold  upon  the  people  that  they  were  never  re- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  315 

nounced  till  civilization  modified  them  out  of  recognition 
or  did  away  with  them  altogether.  There  is  no  strong  evi- 
dence to  support  the  view  of  Sayce  l  that  such  a  wave  of 
early  culture  swept  over  Egypt  from  without  as  to  intro- 
duce new  religious  notions  and  rites,  (e.g.,  the  deification  of 
kings).  Egyptian  kings  were  worshipped  by  the  fourth 
dynasty. 

Among  animals,  serpents  hold  a  high  place,  but  as  ob- 
jects rather  of  abhorrence  than  of  regard.  Thus  in  the 
Pyramid  texts  there  are  many  charms  directed  against 
them.  The  sun-god  Re  was  wounded  by  a  serpent  and  the 
Pharaoh,  who  is  one  with  Re,  is  protected  from  them  when 
dead  by  charms.  But  this  was  under  the  sun-cult,  and  a 
charm  against  the  serpent  is  an  indication  that  the  magic 
of  the  charm  has  taken  the  place  of  a  belief  in  the  potency 
of  the  serpent.  Pilgrimages  are  made  even  to  this  day  to 
the  "  mountain  of  the  serpent,"  where  are  tombs  to  a  male 
and  female  serpent,  which  have  been  worshipped  there  for 
six  thousand  years.  Just  such  a  god  was  the  serpent  wor- 
shipped by  the  children  of  Israel.  This  serpent-worship 
reaches  its  culmination  in  the  dread  of  the  asp  or  cobra- 
like  viper  and  the  uraeus,  poisonous  snakes,  particularly 
feared,  and  'hence  venerated ;  out  of  the  general  horror  of 
which  grew  the  cult  of  the  dragon-serpent  Apop  (Apophis) 
with  seven  heads,  the  foe  of  Re  and  Horus  and  the  monster 
of  the  deep  inimical  to  all  souls  entering  the  underworld. 
He  thus  became  the  personification  of  the  darkness  of  night 
and  of  all  evil.  The  sun-god  Re  and  Apop  fought  much 
as  Marduk  and  Tiamat  fight  in  Babylonian  legend.  Ac- 
cording to  Budge,2  the  two  stories  are  so  much  alike  that 
they  must  have  had  the  same  source.  Yet  this  is  not  an 
inevitable  conclusion,  since  such  antitheses  appear  in  mytho- 
logical form  elsewhere.  This  serpent  is  not  an  animal,  still 
less  a  totem.  It  may  be  said  here  once  for  all  that  many 

iGifford  Lectures   (1903),  The  Religions  of  Ancient  Egypt  and 
Babylonia. 
2  The  Gods  of  the  Egyptians,  London,  1904,  i,  p.  327. 


3*6  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

writers  have  assumed  totemic  origin  for  serpent,  bull,  etc., 
in  Egypt  without  remembering  that  totemism  implies  not  only 
clan-worship  but  also  brotherhood  with  the  animal-class 
on  the  part  of  man.  No  primitive  totemism  is  found  in 
Egypt.  The  contempt  poured  upon  the  Egyptians  by  the 
Greek  and  Roman  world  was  based  on  partial  ignorance  of 
what  the  animals  were  whom  the  one  revered  and  the  other 
despised.  Before  the  Greek  ridiculed  him,  the  higher  sort 
of  Egyptian  had  already  passed  from  pure  animal- worship 
to  nobler  conceptions ;  but  the  mass  of  the  people  still  wor- 
shipped snakes,  and  stones,  and  probably  the  priests  in  gen- 
eral believed  in  such  divinities. 

It  would  be  useless  to  enumerate  the  animals  regarded 
as  gods  by  the  Egyptians,  because  the  cult  was  localized  at 
first  in  each  instance;  a  list  of  them  simply  represents  the 
animals  originally  regarded  as  divine  at  different  places. 
It  will  suffice  to  notice  the  most  important. 

Herodotus  tells  us  of  the  worship  of  Epaphos  (Hd.  iii. 
28),  that  is  the  bull  Apis  of  Memphis,  the  animal  sacred  to 
Ptah.  This  god  appeared  to  the  people  (and  thus  made  a 
holiday)  at  an  .unfortunate  moment,  which  angered  Cam- 
byses.  On  its  tongue  was  a  beetle,  on  its  back  the  figure  of 
an  eagle,  and  when  Cambyses  wounded  it,  he  went  mad. 
This  is  the  "  new  life  of  Ptah,"  a  bull  that  conserved  the 
life  of  the  creator-god  in  animal  form.  He  had  annual 
festivals  and  when  he  died  a  costly  funeral.  But  this  is 
only  one  elevated  form  of  cattle-worship.  The  bull  per  se, 
as  well  as  an  incarnation  of  a  higher  god,  was  a  bucolic 
divinity.  As  Serapis  of  Sinope,  late  in  Egyptian  history, 
the  Apis  became  an  "  Osiris-Apis  "  and  through  this  con- 
nexion was  reintroduced  to  the  Greeks  as  an  equivalent  of 
Hades.  The  Golden  Calf  of  the  Israelites  may  have  been 
the  symbol  of  the  original  god  as  bull  of  Memphis.1  As 

1  Joseph  married  the  daughter  of  a  priest  of  Heliopolis,  where 
the  Sun  was  worshipped  as  a  bull  or  a  bull  as  the  Sun,  the  animal 
being  a  form  of  the  sun-god ;  this  is  the  Mnevis  form  of  Re. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  317 

"  Serapis,"  the  bull  was  encircled  by  a  serpent,  representing 
immortal  life. 

Of  the  worship  of  the  ram,  ba,  it  need  only  be  said  that  its 
cult  was  heightened  (as  reproductive  god)  through  the  acci- 
dent of  ba  being  also  the  word  designating  soul.1  Hence 
the  ba  of  Amon-Re  was  at  once  the  "  ram  "  and  the  soul 
of  the  Sun.  Khnum,  the  cataract-god  and  creator,  has  a 
ram's  head.  At  Bubastos  there  was  a  cult  of  cats,  perhaps 
originally  as  the  foe  of  snakes;  but  there  was  no  general 
worship  of  cats  before  (c.  2100)  the  XI  dynasty  and  it 
was  not  till  the  XVII  dynasty  that  the  cat  became  chief  god 
of  Bubastos.  Earlier  than  the  cat  at  the  same  place  was 
worshipped  the  lion,  and  the  cat  may  perhaps  have  repre- 
sented the  nobler  brute.  Later  every  cat  in  Egypt  was 
mummified  and  brought  to  Bubastos  for  burial  as  a  divine 
creature,  sacred  to  Bast,  the  goddess  with  the  head  of  a 
cat  or  lion,  almost  identical  with  Pakht  (wife  of  Ptah). 
The  lion,  separately,  was  also  revered  as  an  embodiment  of 
the  Sun,  as  most  local  divinities  were  made  forms  of  the 
Sun.  This  primitive  lion- worship  (become  sun-worship) 
has  been  perpetuated  in  the  form  of  the  ("  throttler  "  lion) 
Sphinx  at  Gizeh,  which  is  of  the  IV  dynasty  and  probably 
older  even  than  the  Great  Pyramid,  near  which  it  stands. 
This  figure,  about  140  feet  long  (the  head  is  about  14  x  30), 
is  a  lion  with  a  human  face,  and  its  position  is  such  as  to 
face  the  rising  sun.  Lion-gods  guarded  the  tunnel  through 
which  the  Sun  passed  at  night.  They  were  called  "  Yester- 
day and  Today"  (Akeru,  later  Sef  and  Tuan).  But  hu- 
man-headed lions  (really  representing  kings)  also  guarded 
the  palace  of  the  king  as  son  of  the  Sun.  They  were  to 
keep  off  evil  spirits  and  did  not  represent  mysterious  wis- 
dom, as  the  Greeks  thought.  They  were  also  male  divini- 
ties, not,  like  the  Greek  sphinxes,  winged  lionesses.2  Some 

1  So  India  confused  a/a,  "  goat,"  with  a/a,  the  "  unborn,"  eternal. 

2  But  the  goddess   Sekhmet,   representing  the    Sun's   destructive 
heat,  has  a  lion's  head.     The  cat  is  her  manifestation. 


318  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Egyptian  sphinxes  have  lion-heads,  others  have  human 
heads  and  leonine  bodies ;  still  others,  the  head  of  a  ram.1 
The  great  sphinx  at  Gizeh  dates  from  the  first  half  of  the 
third  millennium  (time  of  Cheops)  or  earlier,  and  is  an 
idealized  lion,  perhaps  intended  as  a  form  of  Horus.  Be- 
fore it  are  altar  and  temple  grounds. 

A  good  example  of  the  very  local  character  of  some  ani- 
mal gods  may  be  found  in  the  statement  that  the  crocodile, 
Sebek,  was  killed  in  some  places,  as  an  Elephantine,  and 
worshipped  in  others,  chiefly  at  Thebes.  It  is  feared  and 
so  killed ;  it  is  feared  and  so  deified.  As  a  god  it  kept  off 
hostile  tribes  across  the  river.  As  a  demon  it  was  asso- 
ciated with  Set,  the  enemy  of  Osiris ;  but  by  the  VI  dynasty 
(c.  2475  B.C.)  it  was  identified  with  Re,  the  Sun.  In  the 
Delta  the  hippopotamus,  Rert,  was  more  generally  wor- 
shipped as  productive  and  beneficent.  It  is  the  emblem  of 
Set  and  also  mother  of  the  Sun  in  later  syncretism.  Other 
animals  worshipped  here  and  there  are  the  elephant,  jackal, 
ichneumon,  hare,  hedge-hog,  shrew-mouse;  also  the  bear 
(perhaps),  and  the  wolf  (cf.  Lycopolis)  ;  but  not  the  dog, 
except  as  jackal.  The  pig,  as  associate  of  Set,  the  god  of 
evil,  was  detested.  The  ass  was  regarded  by  some  as  a  god, 
by  some  as  a  devil.  The  baboon  was  the  animal  or  emblem 
of  Thoth,  but  his  head  was  always  that  of  the  ibis. 
*,  Among  birds,  mention  must  be  made  first  of  Horus,  the 
falcon  (symbol)  ; 2  then  of  the  fabled  phoenix,  Bennu,  heron- 
type  of  resurrection,  typified  by  the  new  Sun  of  which  it 
was  the  emblem.  Herodotus  (ii,  73)  reports  what  he  con- 
siders to  be  the  general  belief : 3  "It  seldom  makes  its 
appearance.  .  .  only  once  in  five  hundred  years,  as  the  in- 
habitants of  Heliopolis  say;  who  narrate  that  it  comes  only 
on  the  death  of  its  sire.  Its  plumage  is  golden-coloured  and 

1  A  sphinx  with  a  hawk's  head  represents  the  hawk-god  of  Er- 
ment   (south  of  Thebes)    called  Mentu,  god  of  war  in  the  XIX 
dynasty. 

2  Sokar,   the  death-god,   appears   as  a  hawk,   i.  e.,  hawk  as   soul 
(especially  of  kings). 

3  It  is  doubtful,  however,  whether  this  is  a  correct  report. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  3J9 

red  and  it  resembles  in  shape  an  eagle  ...  it  comes  from 
Arabia  and  brings  the  body  of  its  sire  to  the  temple  of  the 
Sun."  The  same  authority  mentions  the  various  animals 
considered  as  gods  in  his  own  day  and  says  that  the  Egyp- 
tians also  worshipped  real  birds  J  as  well  as  the  phoenix  and 
that  eels  and  some  fishes  were  sacred  to  the  people.  Among 
all  the  lower  animals,  none  was  so  sacred  as  the  holy  beetle 
or  scarab,  the  symbol  of  the  rising  sun  and  also  god  of 
creation  and  resurrection.  Owing  to  its  "  self-existence  " 
(supposed  to  be  born  of  itself)  it  became  the  symbol  of 
eternal  life. 

It  does  not  present  an  adequate  view  of  Egyptian  reli- 
gion to  present  these  animals  as  other  than  they  were.  To 
refer  to  Anubis  as  "  the  ancient  mortuary  god,"  without 
emphasizing  that  this  god  was  the  jackal,  who  was  a  mor- 
tuary god  because  he  devoured  the  dead,  is  to  give  a  false 
impression.  The  underlying  truth  thus  glossed  over  is  that 
the  beast  himself  was  at  first  a  god ;  only  as  a  later  phase 
can  we  speak  of  the  god  of  the  dead  as  a  divinity  having 
only  a  trace  left  of  his  animal  origin.2 

If  we  turn  now  to  the  higher  gods  we  shall  find  a  number 
of  local  divinities  whose  tendency  is  to  enlarge  their  do- 
main and  become  vaguer  in  consequence  of  a  wide-spread 
synecretism.  These  gods  represent  natural  powers  as  well 
as  abstractions ;  they  were  presumably  local  divinities  grad- 
ually amalgamated  both  with  each  other  and  with  higher 
gods  even  than  themselves.  They  often  appear  in  triads 
and  enneads  and  even  in  groups  of  three  enneads,  which 
consist  of  the  chief  local  gods.  The  triad,  usually  of  father, 
mother,  and  son,  is  replaced  by  an  ennead  consisting  of 
eight  gods  grouped  about  the  chief  local  god.  Altogether 

1  Both  the  ibis  and  baboon  represent  Thoth.    The  vulture  repre- 
sents mother-gods.    The  goose  is  connected  with  Amon. 

2  Anubis  was  the  god  of  the  necropolis  of  Siut  (Lycopolis),  where 
the  city-god  was  the  "path-opener"  (Upwawet),  wolf -god  or  sun- 
god.    The  city  and  necropolis  gods  are  often  identified.     Thus  Ptah 
is  not  only  Ptah-Tatanen  (two  gods  in  one),  but  also  Ptah-Sokar 
(the  necropolis  god). 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  composition  of  such  enneads,  belonging  to  different 
cities,  reveals  the  names  of  what  we  may  consider  the  most 
revered  gods.  Thus  at  Heliopolis  (On)  Atum,  the  sun- 
god,  the  head  of  the  ennead,1  begets  of  himself  the  air-god 
Shu  and  his  wife  Tefenet  (of  unknown  meaning),  from 
whom  were  born  Geb  and  Nut  (earth-god  and  sky- 
goddess),  whose  children  were  Osiris,  Set,  Isis,  and  Neph- 
thys.  Later  the  same  city  recognizes  three  enneads,  twenty- 
seven  gods  reckoned  as  three  dynasties  prior  to  the  histor- 
ical first  dynasty  of  Menes. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  opposed  to  these  nature-gods,  for 
the  most  part  local  gods  of  the  Delta,  the  ogdoad  at  Hermop- 
olis  in  upper  Egypt  consisted  of  such  abstractions,  though 
furnished  with  animal  heads,  as  the  elements  or  powers 
(differently  interpreted)  in  male  and  female  form,  the  lat- 
ter being  one  with  the  former  but  with  a  grammatical  end- 
ing indicating  the  feminine,  although  the  group  of  eight  is 
headed  by  (Hermes)  Thoth.  He  was  the  local  moon-  and 
time-god  of  creation  and  magical  powers,  the  scribe  of  the 
gods,  who  represents  science  and  art  and  is  represented  by 
the  ibis  or  peacock  and  baboon  form,  whether  as  symbol 
or  as  original  deity.2  As  such  he  became  the  Greek  Hermes 
trismegistos  (also  the  planet  Saturn).  His  consort  is 
Maat,  the  Right  Order,  goddess  of  measure  and  justice, 
whose  "  priests  "  are  the  judges. 

The  best-known  triads  are  those  of  Abydos  (Philae), 
Osiris-Isis-Horus ;  of  Memphis,  Ptah-Sekhet-Iemhotep ;  and 
of  Thebes,  Amon-Mut-Khensu.  Amon  is  at  first  a  local 
earth-god.  Mut,  the  mother-god,  is  identified  with  Isis,  the 
cow-mother ;  the  sky  being  woman  or  cow  as  productive  fe- 
male ;  Khensu,  her  son,  is  the  moon ;  Sekhet,  wife  of  Ptah, 

1The  sun-god  himself  is  born  of  Nun,  the  water  of  primeval 
chaos,  or  springs  from  a  lotus  or  appears  on  the  sun-stone  pyramid. 
Each  local  god  is  revered  as  creator.  Some  of  these  local  divinities 
were  female.  Thus  the  Sky,  as  creatrix,  spins  out  the  world. 

2  Probably  originally  Thoth  with  four  powers,  abstractions  or  per- 
haps quarters,  frog-headed  beings  (grouped  with  four  others  with 
serpent-heads).  Compare  Michabo  and  the  Four  Winds  (p.  86). 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  321 

is  identified  with  Pakht,  and  has  a  lion's  head.  As  already 
noticed,  she  is  a  goddess  difficult  to  distinguish  from  the 
cat-headed  Bast ;  she  is  daughter  of  Re,  the  sun-god.  The 
Sun  is  male,  as  is  the  Moon;  but  Earth  is  also  male  and 
heaven,  the  sky,  is  female  in  this  mythology.  Mut  as 
sky-mother  has  a  vulture's  head.  As  mother  of  Horus,  Isis 
is  Hathor,  cow ;  she  is  also  identified  with  the  star  Sirius 
(Sothis),  as  Osiris  is  with  Orion,  and  at  a  later  date  with 
Venus.  Probably  Hathor  was  originally  quite  distinct. 
None  of  these  family  triads  imply  a  real  trinity.  At  Ele- 
phantine the  triad  was  not  even  a  "  family  three,"  but  a  male 
god  with  two  females.  The  enneads  are  not  fixed;  some- 
times ten  or  eleven  gods  make  a  group.  The  individual 
relationship  of  the  gods  is  also  not  fixed.  Horus,  the  four- 
fold early  sky  or  sun-god  in  falcon-form  or  as  a  winged 
disc,  is  son  of  Isis  and  of  Hathor  and  also  son  of  Re;  son 
too  of  Geb  and  Nut  (Earth  and  Sky),  and  of  Osiris,  who 
himself  is  father,  brother,  and  husband  of  Isis  and  father 
and  son  of  Horus. 

Evidently  different  localities  and  different  times  are  rep- 
resented by  this  confusion.  We  may  distinguish  in  gen- 
eral two  geographical  groups,  one  that  of  the  North  and 
one  of  the  South,  originally  two  warring  nations  after- 
wards politically  united.  The  earlier  great  power  was  that 
of  the  South,  the  seat  of  the  sun-cult.  Opposed  to  this 
is  the  realm  of  lower  Egypt,  the  Delta,  where  the  earth- 
god  Osiris  was  recognized  and  identified  with  various  local 
gods,  such  as  Hapi,  the  river,  the  ram  at  Mendes,  and  the 
tree  at  Busiris,  and  was  associated  with  Isis,  local  goddess 
of  Buto  near  Busiris ;  but  he  was  opposed  to  Set  (Typhon), 
god  of  storm,  dearth,  and  death,  later  as  Sebek,  the  croco- 
dile-god of  Ombos,  and  as  Apop,  god  of  darkness,  a  god  of 
Upper  Egypt  and  the  eastern  part  of  the  Delta.  Set  later 
became  the  serpent  and  Satan  of  the  Osiris-cult.  Re,  the 
material  sun,  whose  name-power  Isis  controlled  and  whose 
eyes  had  to  be  restored,  was  worshipped  by  the  "  great 
house"  (Peraa,  Pharaoh)  of  On  (Heliopolis).  He  was 


322  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

called  Atum-Re,  later  Amon-Re.  Osiris,  his  foe  at  first, 
was  a  death-god  from  his  connection  with  the  earth  or 
burial.  Re  is  the  god  who  goes  through  the  sky  on  his  boat, 
rowed  by  stars,  of  two  poles  lashed  together,  like  those  of  a 
Nile  boatman.  This  is  the  "  boat  of  millions  of  years  "  in 
which  his  worshipper,  the  king,  hopes  to  sail  with  him.  The 
early  cult  of  the  sun  is  an  aristocratic,  royal  service;  it  is 
always  the  king  who  hopes  to  be  friend  or  even  overcomer 
of  Re ;  it  is  the  king  for  whom  the  great  pyramids  are  built, 
and  to  whom  stores  of  provisions  are  offered  in  the  tomb 
of  the  pyramid.  The  royal  pyramid  itself  is  a  symbol 
of  the  sun,  and  the  obelisk,  crowned  with  a  little  pyramid, 
is  of  the  same  general  character.  The  pyramid  texts  depict 
the  power  obtained  by  the  king  through  magical  charms, 
which  he  uses  to  get  entry  into  the  eastern  sky,  where  was 
the  home  of  the  Sun  and  other  gods.  He  fares  thither  on  a 
boat  ferried  by  Look-behind,  the  poleman,  and  arrives  at 
the  garden  of  the  Tree  of  Life,  and  finally  is  welcomed 
by  the  gods,  whom  he  subdues  or  even  devours  by  magic 
charms,  ousting  the  scribe  of  Re  from  his  place,  or  per- 
haps becoming  a  passenger  or  rower  in  the  sun-god's  boat. 
All  felicity  and  power  is  his  and  he  uses  it  unscrupulously 
to  get  a  good  place  in  heaven  and  even  to  take  the  place 
of  the  sun-god,  so  that  in  some  texts  the  king  actually  be- 
comes Re.1  Such  is  the  royal  religion  of  the  South. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  Delta,  opposed  to  this  cult  but 
almost  as  old,  is  the  Osiris-cult.  Osiris  is  not  an  active  god, 
as  is  Re.  He  does  not  help  his  worshipper,  as  does  Re,  by 
interfering  in  his  behalf ;  but  his  son  Horus  does  this  for 
him.  The  worshipper  on  dying  at  once  becomes  Osiris, 
and  then  Horus,  as  his  son,  exerts  himself  for  the  dead. 
Osiris  is  the  god  of  the  poor  people  and  is  only  gradually 
exalted  to  the  sky ;  his  native  place  is  earth  and  the  realms 
below  earth.  It  is  only  later,  for  example,  that  the  stars 

1  The  different  sun-presentations  are  due  to  the  fancy  that  the 
god  sails  across  the  sky  (as  above)  or  flies  (as  the  hawk,  Horus)  ; 
or  he  is  a  bull-calf  born  of  Hathor  every  day,  etc. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  323 

as  souls  become  his  followers,  and  Osiris  himself  makes  one 
of  the  four  Horns  gods,  taking  the  place  of  the  older  Horus 
of  the  East  The  great  strength  of  Osiris  lay  in  the  popu- 
lar belief  that  he  was  a  human  god  ;  it  was  on  earth  that  he 
lived  and  died,  and  as  soon  as  the  country  became  one 
politically  the  two  cults  began  to  merge,  till  even  the  priests 
of  Re  had  to  accept  Osiris  as  a  great  god  and  represent  him 
as  ascending  to  heaven,  though  the  pyramids  themselves 
bear  texts  showing  that  at  first  he  was  regarded  as  a  foe 
to  the  sun-god.  The  royal  state  theology  had  finally  to 
give  way  before  the  cult  of  the  humanized  earth-god.  Even 
the  local  habitation  of  Osiris  is  changed.  Originally  he  is 
"  First  of  the  Westerners  "  ;  then  he  goes  to  the  East,  the 
home  of  Re,  where  is  the  sycamore  "  on  which  sit  the  gods 
in  the  East."  The  life  of  the  dead  is  then  changed  to  a 
sky-life,  even  in  the  Osiris  cult,  and  finally  the  two  gods  are 
identified,  and  thus  what  was  primarily  the  happy  fate  of 
the  king  becomes  the  fate  of  the  pious  poor.  At  first  the 
dead  king  is  warned  against  going  to  the  West  :  '*  Those 
who  go  West,  come  net  back  again."  At  first,  too,  the  com- 
mon dead  are  called  "  those  whose  places  are  unknown," 
or  vaguely  thought  of  in  the  West,  or  again  they  were 
thought  to  be  stars,  but  this  last  belief  gave  way  before  that 
of  the  Re-cult.  The  pyramid  texts  do  not  speak  of  any 
hereafter  in  the  nether  world  ;  to  them  the  sky  was  heaven, 
the  abode  of  the  blessed  dead.  The  union  of  the  two  lands, 
the  South  and  the  North,  took  place,  however,  as  early  as 
the  twenty-seventh  century  (when  "  Unis  unites  the  [North 
and  South]  1  two  lands"),  even  if  the  political  activity  of 
Menes  as  uniter  of  the  Two  Lands  in  the  thirty-fourth 
century  be  disregarded.  As  Re  is  amalgamated  with  Atum 
or  Turn,  oldest  name  of  the  sun-god,  and  with  Amon,  so 
at  last  he  becomes  one  with  Osiris,  as  Osiris  in  turn  is 
identified  with  Ptah.  Especially  noteworthy,  however,  is 


(Unas)  was  a  king  of  the  fifth  dynasty  for  whom  was 
built  the  oldest  of  the  five  pyramids  containing  the  Pyramid  Texts 
at  Sakkarah  (the  date  according  to  Brugsch  would  be  about  3300). 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  similar  amalgamation  with  the  lower  ancient  gods,  the 
animals.  Thus  Anubis,  the  jackal,  god  of  the  grave  of 
shallow  sand,  becomes  associated  with  Osiris  and  with  Set. 
Set  himself,  perhaps  the  Moab  god  (Numbers  xxiv.  17, 
"  break  down  the  sons  of  Sheth,  '  tumult '  "),  was  at  first,  as 
explained  above,  the  god  of  storm  and  death,  who  later  be- 
came the  evil  genius,  foe  of  Osiris. 

-  In  the  XVIII  dynasty,  Thutmose  (or  Thothmes)  III 
(1501-1447  B.  c.)  set  up  a  temple  to  this  foe  of  Osiris.  It 
has  been  supposed  that  Set  represents  a  foreign  Semitic 
invasion  but  this  is  merely  supposition.  The  pantheon  is 
not  one  of  very  divine  beings.  All  these  gods  are  anthropo- 
morphic ;  they  are  not  omniscient,  nor  omnipotent,  but  have 
feelings  and  passions  like  men,  suffer,  conquer,  and  are 
overthrown.  Even  Re  suffers  from  the  serpent  and  is 
overthrown  by  human  spirits.  The  combination  of  local 
gods,  which  makes  a  god  indicated  by  a  double  name  Re- 
Amon,  Re-Atum,  etc.,  is  sometimes  utilized  to  identify  dif- 
ferent gods  as  forms  of  one  at  certain  periods,  as  "  Khepera 
in  the  morning,  Re  at  noon."  The  motherhood  of  Mut,  the 
mother  (-sky),  passes  over  to  Re  and  the  god  is  called 
"  father  and  mother  of  all."  Even  the  gods  not  of  nature- 
origin  share  in  this  syncretism.  Ptah,  who  kept  his  life  in 
the  Memphis  (Apis)  bull,  is  regarded  as  a  form  of  Re,  but 
he  was  originally  the  chief  god  of  the  "  city  of  the  good," 
Memphis,  the  oldest  capital  of  Egypt  (Egypt  was  the 
sacred  name  of  the  town).  As  said  above,  he  formed  a 
triad  with  Sekhet  and  lemhotep,  who  was  the  physician  god. 
As  other  gods  become  assimilated  to  Re,  so  foreign  gods 
join  the  Osiris  cycle.  Thoth  (Hermes),  the  literary  god 
of  art  and  learning,  stands  in  Re's  boat,  but  he  also  assists 
Osiris.  He  appears  originally  to  have  been  one  of  the  ani- 
mal gods  (ibis),  but  one  of  his  forms  is  Khensu  the  moon- 
god  ("traveller").  In  the  earliest  period  the  antagonism 
between  South  and  North  was  still  apparent  in  theology. 
Horus,  son  of  Isis,  leads  smiths  and  metal-workers  to  the 
North  and  overcomes  the  land.  He  is  a  hawk-form  of  the 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  325 

sun,  heru,  "  he  above,"  and  was  probably  the  earliest  god 
worshipped  by  the  whole  country.  He  is  of  especial  in- 
terest because  of  his  Greek  name  Harpocrates  ("  god  of 
silence  "),  that  is  Heru-p-khart  (or  Harpekhred),  originally 
the  "  Horus-child  "  or  younger  Horus,  son  of  Isis,  as  the 
rising  sun.  Hathor  was  the  mother  of  the  elder  Horus. 
Hathor,  sometimes  sky-goddess,  absorbed  other  goddesses, 
as  Re  absorbed  other  gods.  She,  like  Isis,  had  a  cow's  head 
and  was  both  mother  and  daughter  of  Re,  who  in  his  own 
cycle  was  father  of  Horus.  Sayce  regards  her  as  Ishtar, 
Astoreth  of  Canaan.  She  became  the  type  of  the  supreme 
woman,  goddess  of  love,  dance,  song,  yet  perfect  mother 
and  daughter,  who  was  identified  by  the  Greeks  with  Aphro- 
dite. Yet  she  was  also  a  goddess  of  the  underworld,  who 
received  the  souls  of  the  dead,  as  well  as  consort  of  Horus. 

The  Amon-cult  united  with  that  of  Re  when  Amon,  after- 
wards important  as  an  oracle  but  at  first  an  obscure  local 
god,  became  glorious  in  the  XII  Dynasty  and  reached  inde- 
pendent greatness,  as  Thebes  became  the  capital  of  Egypt. 
This  local  Amon  was  raised  to  be  a  form  of  Re,  when  Thut- 
mose  III  conquered  Palestine  about  1500  B.  c.  His  god  ab- 
sorbed then  the  other  forms.  It  was  a  priest  of  this  god 
Amon  who  founded  the  XXI  Dynasty. 

Busiris  in  the  Delta  means  "  plain  of  Osiris  "  and  his  field 
of  marshmallows,  asphodels,  was  merely  the  cemetery  of 
Busiris ;  but  the  sepulchral  temple  of  the  god,  an  old  royal 
tomb,  was  at  Abydos.  The  views  regarding  the  true  nature 
of  Osiris  are  as  numerous  as  the  authorities  who  have  dis- 
cussed him.  Dr.  Budge  imagines  that  Osiris  was  first  a 
king  and  was  then  identified  with  the  Nile  (the  Nile  ap- 
pears independently  in  the  triad  of  Elephantine  as  a  creative 
principle).  Sir  J.  G.  Frazer  sees  in  Osiris  the  type  of  the 
divine  king,  whose  health  and  strength  are  preserved  for  his 
people  by  slaying  him  when  he  grows  weak  or  old  and  thus 
passing  on  his  power  to  the  next  king.  Cases  of  this  sort 
are  found  in  Europe  and  elsewhere.  But  that  Osiris  was 
actually  a  king  (any  more  than  Adonis)  rests  only  on  the 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

support  of  his  "  tomb  "  being  that  of  King  Khant.  Yet 
even  the  tomb  of  Zeus  was  known  and  Osiris  is  rather,  like 
Attis  and  Adonis,  a  spirit  than  a  man.  It  is  perhaps  more 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  people  regarded  him  as  a 
king  because  of  his  story  and  to  find  in  his  earthly  rather 
than  human  nature  his  first  existence.  We  have  only  to 
extend  this  to  the  general  fruitful  spirit  which  is  shown 
both  in  Nile  and  in  earth-growth  to  get  the  most  consistent 
explanation  of  the  god.  Yet  the  important  point  in  the 
religion  which  centred  about  Osiris  is  not  how  he  began, 
but  what  he  was  to  Egypt.  He  was  looked  upon  as  a  man- 
god  who  had  lived,  suffered  and  died  and  then  risen  again 
from  the  dead.1  The  story  is  told  crudely.  He  is  de- 
stroyed by  the  sinful  Set  and  is  dismembered ;  but  Horus 
sacrifices  his  eye  and  with  it  awakens  the  dead  god  to  life, 
so  that  ever  after  a  gift  to  a  god  is  called  an  "  eye  of  Horus." 
When  Osiris  rises  from  the  dead  he  becomes  the  lord  of  the 
underworld  and  every  soul  that  dies  and  hopes  to  rise  again 
is  called  Osiris,  the  god  being  identified  with  the  soul  even 
of  the  humblest  worshipper.  One  fact  is  certain,  that,  like 
Maat 2  and  Ptah,  he  was  not  a  beast-god.  Accompanying 
Osiris  as  judge  of  the  dead,  Anubis,  the  old  beast-god  of 
burial  at  Siut,  is  there  to  look  at  the  balance,  and  Nephthys 
the  mother  of  Anubis,  who  is  sister-wife  of  Set,  joins  in 
judgment,  so  that  the  Osiris-cult  is  mixed  up  with  the  older 
animal-cult,  but  Osiris  himself  has  no  trace  of  animal  origin. 
His  sister-wife  is  Isis,  who  mourns  for  him  when  slain 
and  finds  his  remains,  and  their  child  is  Horus,  the  earliest 
form  of  the  goddess-mother  (Madonna)  with  the  child. 

1  For  allusions   (there  is  no  direct  evidence)   to  Egyptian  king- 
killing,  see  M.  A.  Murray  in  Man,  1914,  No.  12;  and  for  an  Ural- 
Altaic  case,  ib.,  1915,  No.  13.    The  great  festival  at  Sais  was  a  sort 
of  All-souls,  when  all  the  dead  returned.     The  case  of   Osiris  is 
thought  to  be  supported  by  that  of  the  Shilluk  king,  but  he  may 
have  been  merely  the  legendary  founder  of  Fashoda.    The  deifica- 
tion of  the  king  as  Osiris  does  not  prove  an  earlier  sacrifice  of  the 
king,  but  it  suggests  it. 

2  With  Maat  as  the  right  order,  justice,  etc.,  a  pure  abstraction, 
compare  Tao  and  Rita,  in  Chinese  and  Vedic  mythology. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  327 

Thus  Osiris  represents  the  type  of  resurrection  and  eternal 
life  and  at  the  same  time  is  the  father  in  the  triad  of  father, 
wife  and  son.  Osiris's  cult  as  it  expanded  absorbed  that 
of  Re,  whose  attributes  were  transferred  to  Osiris.  Ac- 
cording to  Plutarch  (Isis,  ch.  ix),  Isis  is  one  with  the  god- 
dess of  Sais,1  whom  the  Greeks  call  Athene.  She  was  the 
great  mother-goddess  (also  mother  of  the  Sun),  whose 
shrine  bore  the  inscription,  "  I  am  all  that  was  and  is  and 
is  to  be  and  none  hath  ever  raised  my  veil."  The  father  of 
Osiris  is  Geb,  the  earth-god  whose  chief  cult  was  at  Helio- 
polis.  Geb  and  Nut  (sky)  produced  the  sun-egg,  and  Geb's 
symbol  is  the  goose,  whence  he  is  interpreted  as  the  "  great 
cackler "  (Kenken-ir).  He  is  likewise  father  of  Set  and 
Nephthys.  Nut  pours  out  water  for  the  soul  of  the  dead 
and  her  holy  sycamore  at  Heliopolis  is  still  holy  to  the  local 
Christian. 

Not  quite  so  confused  as  his  gods  is  the  soul  of  the  wor- 
shipper. At  first,  indeed,  we  are  confronted  with  a  strange 
medley  of  "  souls,' '  the  ka  and  the  ba,  the  shadow-soul,  and 
other  forms,  but  in  fact,  though  savages  have  several  souls 
and  something  of  this  sort  might  have  been  expected,  the 
Egyptian  did  not  have  a  shadow-soul  and  a  spirit,  khu, 
distinct  from  a  soul,  ba.  He  had  a  body  which  survived 
death,  a  ka  or  genius  and  a  ba  or  soul.2  These  might  be 
duplicated  in  the  case  of  gods  (Re  has  fourteen  kas  and 
seven  bas)  but  for  a  man  one  apiece  was  enough.  The  ka 
is  a  spirit  born  with  a  man  and  given  him  by  the  god.  It 
is  not  part  of  a  man's  personality;  it  guards  him  particu- 
larly in  the  next  life,  so  that  when  a  man  dies  he  "  goes  to 
his  ka "  in  the  sky  (so  even  of  Osiris,  "  he  went  to  his  ka"). 
The  ka  is  thus  the  superior  guardian  and  when  a  man  dies 
he  is  dominated  by  his  ka,  who  speaks  for  him  to  the  god 
after  death,  brings  him  food,  assists  and  protects  him,  as  a 

1  She  is  supposed  by  some  scholars  to  be  of  Libyan  origin,  perhaps 
at  first  a  war-goddess. 

2  Compare   Breasted,  Development  of  Religion  and   Thought  in 
Ancient  Egypt,  New  York,  1912,  p.  56,  note  2. 


328  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

sort  of  guardian  angel.  Originally  the  ka  is  only  given  to 
a  king,  afterwards  to  each  and  every  man.  A  man's  person- 
ality consists  in  his  intelligence  (in  his  belly)  and  in  his 
breath  as  vital  power,  symbolized  by  a  cross  and  called  ba, 
a  soul,  which,  however,  begins  to  live  as  an  entity  only  when 
the  man  dies,  so  that  ceremonies  are  performed  to  make  the 
dead  "  become  a  ba."  Hence  food  is  given  to  support  life 
hereafter  and  transform  the  dead  into  a  soul,  as  Horus's 
eye  transformed  the  dead  Osiris  into  a  living  soul.  His 
body  was  a  part  of  him  without  which  he  could  not  live; 
he  was  reanimated  and  re-embodied.  He  was  not  naturally 
immortal.  His  faculties  had  to  be  restored  to  him  by  "  mak- 
ing him  a  soul,  ba"  so  that  he  might  exist  again  as  a  per- 
son. Thus  his  "  power  "  and  "  body  "  were  given  to  him. 
The  belief  in  the  ka  made  every  object  finally  have  a  ka 
and  led  to  the  naive  belief  that  figures  of  men  placed  in  the 
tomb  could  represent  men  who  afterwards  were  "  respond- 
ents," Ushebti,  forced  to  work  for  the  dead  man  who  con- 
trolled them  in  the  Field  of  Peace,  or  Elysian  Fields,  where 
the  respondents  took  the  place  of  slaves  in  the  agricultural 
hereafter.1  In  the  earliest  belief,  the  soul  of  the  common 
man  at  least  and  perhaps  of  kings  lingers  in  the  tomb,  for 
which  reason  so  many  loaves  of  bread  and  jugs  of  beer  had 
to  be  provided  for  it.  But  later,  when  all  went  to  a  better 
world,  this  food  had  to  be  conveyed  to  heaven  for  the  soul 
and  bequests  were  regularly  made  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
keeping  up  the  nutriment  of  the  dead.  The  dead,  too,  were 
at  first  malicious,  seeking  to  draw  others  to  death ;  for  which 
reason  even  Osiris  and  his  followers  are  kept  away  from 
the  tombs.  As,  too,  even  loved  ones  when  dead  were  thus 
moved  to  injure  their  living  friends,  so  the  dead  also  as 
well  as  the  living  were  afflicted  by  the  dead,  and  were  fur- 
nished with  medicine  to  keep  off  their  attacks.  The  soul 
in  common  belief  went  eventually  to  heaven.  At  this  time 
it  was  represented  in  the  form  of  a  bird  or  grasshopper, 

1  In  the  same  way,  figured  food  in  the  tombs  took  the  place  of 
real  food,  into  which  it  could  be  converted  by  a  magic  formula. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  329 

or  it  was  thought  to  climb  up  a  ladder,  which  was  guarded 
by  gods.  They  would  let  no  one  pass  who  did  not  have 
the  right  formula  or  open  sesame  which  would  let  him  by. 
Thus  magical  formulas  played  always  a  great  part  in  Egyp- 
tian religion.  The  cult  of  lucky  days  was  also  an  essential 
part  of  religious  ceremony.  But  oracles  were  not  much 
respected  till  a  late  period,  when  "  Jupiter  Amon  "  in  Libya 
became  renowned  chiefly  as  an  oracular  god.  The  cult  of 
formulas  was  connected  with  a  special  kind  of  metempsy- 
chosis. It  was  not,  as  elsewhere,  a  general  belief  that  one 
on  dying  became  reincarnate,  but  by  the  virtue  of  magical 
formulas  one  might,  if  one  wished,  become  a  sparrow  or 
flower.  This  form,  however,  ceased  at  the  will  of  the  in- 
dividual and  the  belief  had  no  moral  content,  such  as  is 
found  in  the  scheme  of  Karma  in  India.  The  effect  of 
this  magical  cult  was  felt  in  Greece,  where,  too,  the  Osiris 
mysteries  affected  the  Orphic  mysteries. 

In  Egypt  itself  there  came  out  of  this  regard  for  magical 
formulas  the  so-called  Book  of  the  Dead,  which  was  not  a 
book  at  all,  but  formulas  and  hymns,  of  magic  purport,  to 
aid  the  dead  to  cross  safely  to  the  other  world,  to  determine 
the  judgment,  and  live  happily  hereafter.  These  became  a 
collection  called  "  Going  from  day/'  the  vade  mecum  of  the 
dead.  The  various  parts  having  been  put  together  in  mod- 
ern times,  it  is  now  a  volume  of  some  two  hundred  chap- 
ters, containing  charms,  directions  for  the  ghostly  journey, 
hymns,  prescriptions  for  restoring  the  body,  etc.  But  be- 
sides the  magical  contents  these  inscriptions  contain  a  moral 
code  and  a  hymn  to  the  Sun,  called  chapters  125  and  15, 
respectively,  and  these  relieve  the  dreary  monotony  of 
senseless  magic.  The  moral  teaching  was,  in  a  way,  part  of 
the  magic,  for  it  was  to  overcome  the  forty-two  gods,  who 
were  stern  censors,  that  it  was  carried  with  the  dead.  Thus, 
as  the  amulets  and  magical  formulas  guarded  against  devils 
and  monsters,  the  moral  code  guarded  against  the  still 
worse  monsters  called  gods,  who,  if  not  satisfied  with  the 
soul's  report,  would  bar  it  from  bliss  and  give  the  victim 


330  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

to  the  "  Devouress  "  of  hell  to  eat,  or,  according  to  a  later 
view,  the  flames  of  hell  tormented  him ;  which  was  the  "  sec- 
ond death."  This  collection,  called  Book  of  the  Dead,  be- 
longs to  the  Osiris  cult.  To  the  Re  cult  belong  two  in- 
ferior collections,  the  Book  of  the  Other  World  and  the  Book 
of  the  Gates.  The  first  (am  duat)  belongs  to  the  XIX 
Dynasty  (1350  to  120x3  B.  c.)  and  the  second  depicts  the  gates 
to  the  caverns  in  the  under  world  and  tells  how  to  pass 
through  them ;  it  reverts  at  least  in  part  to  the  age  of  the 
Middle  Kingdom  (about  2000  B.  c.).  The  soul  might  go  by 
either  of  two  ways,  land  or  water,  a  lake  of  fire  lying  be- 
tween, which  one  had  to  avoid.  Consequently  the  map  of 
the  next  world  was  a  necessary  part  of  one's  equipage. 
Then  one  might  by  mistake  get  into  the  place  where  souls 
were  executed,  or  find  himself  going  upside  down ;  so  there 
were  special  chapters,  entitled  Not  Entering  the  Place  of 
Execution  and  Not  Walking  Head-Downward.  Those  who 
did  not  escape  but  walked  head-downward  became  foes  of 
the  dead  and  formulas  against  these  foes  were  also  neces- 
sary. Much  of  the  eschatology  and  even  more  of  the  sac- 
rificial rites  may  be  historical  (as  they  are  logical)  develop- 
ments from  savage  African  beginnings. 

The  future  which  consisted  in  being  in  the  boat  of  Re 
and  sailing  with  the  sun-god  across  the  sky,  and  that  others 
which  consisted  in  being  an  inhabitant  of  the  Fields  of 
Peace  or  Elysian  Fields  of  Osiris,  may  both  be  regarded 
as  later  views  compared  with  that  primitive  notion  of  the 
hereafter  which  held  that  the  soul  crept  into  the  tomb  and 
came  out  of  it  to  eat  the  offering,  a  view  held  perhaps 
longest  at  Memphis,  where  the  cemetery-god  was  Sokaris, 
but  probably  the  original  view  of  all  Egyptians  before  the 
rise  of  the  Osiris  cult  and  the  extension  of  the  Re-heaven  to 
ordinary  people. 

The  priesthood  and  the  temple-service  of  early  Egypt  are 
not  of  the  same  antiquity.  Formal  temples  are  not  known 
in  the  earliest  texts;  they  are  supposed  to  have  been  built 
first  during  the  Middle  Kingdom  (2160  to  1788).  Of  what 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  33 l 

sort  were  the  buildings  devoted  to  the  gods  before  that,  or 
if  there  were  any  besides  pyramids  and  obelisks,  we  do  not 
know.  Probably  the  tombs  served  as  temples  of  a  sort 
and  the  sacred  stone  or  tree  may  be  regarded  as  a  natural 
temple.  In  the  temples,  when  erected,  animal  figures  rep- 
resenting the  gods  were  systematically  cared  for  by  priests, 
who  gradually  formed  themselves  into  a  body,  partly  hered- 
itary like  a  caste,  which  eventually  exerted  a  political  in- 
fluence sufficient  to  usurp  the  throne.  Before  temples  and 
a  formal  priesthood,  the  prototypes  of  the  religious  fes- 
tivals chronicled  by  Heredotus  may  already  have  existed; 
they  celebrated  powers  of  nature  personified  in  more  or  less 
priapine  form  and  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
erotic-religious  element  was  lacking  at  any  time.  Perhaps 
there  were  even  temples  of  this  cult  that  were  later  de- 
stroyed, for  in  the  first  place  the  Hyksos  probably  demol- 
ished much  of  the  early  architectural  work  and  in  the  second 
we  know  that  kings  sometimes  destroyed  temples  of  inferior 
gods,  to  build  those  of  their  own  superior  divinities. 

The  king  originally  acted  as  head-priest  and  he  was  al- 
ways the  over-priest,  even  when  the  priesthood  was  com- 
plete. Nobles  and  their  ladies  acted  as  servants  (priests) 
of  the  local  god,  but  as  voluntary  officials.  The  priest  offi- 
ciated as  magician  through  the  power  of  the  spoken  or  read 
word,  to  which  a  magical  power  was  attributed.  It  was, 
however,  rather  through  political  prestige  given  by  the  pow- 
erful king  of  a  city  that  the  priesthood  as  a  whole  acquired 
political  authority.  In  time  the  shaven  priest  became  might- 
ier than  the  king,  who  held  at  first,  but  had  not  retained, 
the  spiritual  dominion.  The  laity  had  no  part  in  the  serv- 
ice of  the  god,  except  as  musicians,  etc.  Festivals,  proces- 
sions, sacrifices,  the  receiving  of  offerings,  were  all  in  the 
hands  of  priests,  whose  revenues  were  enormous,  the  State 
gradually  assuming  the  cost  of  maintenance  of  temples. 
Human  sacrifices  were  discontinued  under  the  Ramses 
realm ;  they  were  chiefly  for  providing  guardian  spirits  for 
new  buildings.  Crude  superstition  expressed  itself  as  else- 


332  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

where  in  magic,  philters,  luck-charms,  amulets,  etc.  Dreams 
were  of  import;  lucky  days  were  observed.  Finally,  as  a 
means  of  salvation,  magical  formulas  became  as  potent  as 
morality. 

Of  Egyptian  contact  with  the  Semitic  world  we  learn 
a  good  deal  by  inference  as  well  as  by  actual  historical 
data.  As  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  third  millennium 
before  Christ  the  Egyptians  were  in  touch  with  Arabia 
and  Palestine.  Memphis,  the  capital  of  this  period,  was 
known  to  the  later  Hebrews  also  as  [Men-]Noph  (cf.  Hos. 
ix,  6;  Isa.  xix,  13).  Again,  in  the  nineteenth  century  B.  c., 
Palestine  was  invaded  and  a  city  (perhaps  Shechem)  was 
captured.  It  was  at  this  time  that  social  ethics  was  strongly 
developed.  Then  came  the  Semitic  invasion  of,  or  with, 
the  Hyksos  (c.  1680),  the  conquest  of  Syria  by  Thutmose 
III  in  the  fifteenth  century,  the  Egyptian  control  of  the 
mines  at  Sinai,  the  interchange  of  letters  with  foreign  po- 
tentates in  the  fourteenth  century,1  the  Pharaohs  of  the 
oppression  and  of  the  Exodus  in  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty 
(thirteenth  century),  the  building  of  a  sun-temple  in  Ca- 
naan about  1200;  an  expedition  into  Phoenicia  in  the  twelfth 
century  by  Wenamon;  the  marriage  of  Solomon  and  the 
daughter  of  Pharaoh  (i  Kg.  iii  and  ix),  the  intercourse 
between  Shishak  and  Jeroboam  with  an  invasion  of  Pales- 
tine, and  so  on  till  the  time  when  the  Nubians  conquered 
Egypt,  the  period  of  Sennacherib  (2  Kg.  xix),  the  sack 
of  Thebes  by  Ashurbanipal  (Nahum  ii,  8  calls  Thebes  No- 
Amon,  city  of  Amon),  in  66 1  B.  c.,  and  the  death  of  Josiah 
at  Megiddo  in  608  B.  c. 

Contact  with  Crete  (and  so  with  Greece)  is  indicated  by 
the  Egyptian  labyrinth  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  other 
works  of  art  and  by  the  similarity  in  the  names  Elysium, 
field  of  Alu,  Rhadamanthys,  Re  of  Memphis,  etc.,  as  well 
as  by  the  constant  wars  with  the  Philistines  (of  Crete  or 
Asia  Minor). 

1  Seven  of  these  letters  were  written  by  a  king  of  Palestine,  c. 
1360  B.  c. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  333 

Thutmose  III  had  merged  all  the  priesthoods  of  the  coun- 
try into  one  sacerdotal  body,  headed  by  the  priests  of  Amon, 
local  god  of  Thebes,  who  as  a  form  of  Re  became  the  chief 
god  in  the  sixteenth  century.  The  conquests  of  this  king 
(1501-1447  B.C.)  extended  over  Palestine,1  Phoenicia,  and 
all  Syria;  his  empire  thus  established  lasted  till  1360  B.C., 
during  which  period  Egypt  was  in  close  connection  with  the 
Semitic  world,  both  without  and  within  the  borders  of 
Egypt.  Palestine  had  been  invaded  as  early  as  1850  B.  c. 
by  Sesostris  III.  Egypt  was  no  longer  an  isolated  land. 
The  kings  who  give  us  the  great  hymn  to  the  Sun  and  the 
hymn  which  for  the  only  time  in  Egyptian  history  is  mono- 
theistic in  tone  come  from  a  family  that  had  probably  been 
vassals  of  Semitic  conquerors.  It  is  in  these  circumstances 
that  a  sort  of  monotheism  first  appears  in  Egypt.  It  appears 
only  to  disappear  immediately.  Nothing  could  seem  more 
un-Egyptian  than  this  religious  phenomenon,  thus  suddenly 
rising  and  as  suddenly  going,  the  phenomenon  of  a  One 
God,  who  disperses  all  other  gods  and  under  whose  power 
all  the  paraphernalia  of  the  old  religion  are  swept  away, 
that  nothing,  not  even  the  consecrated  formulas  of  the  old 
creed,  may  impair  his  majesty.  Scholars,  however,  are 
rightly  loath  to  recognize  anything  foreign  in  this  sudden 
exaltation  of  the  "  disc  of  the  Sun."  It  is  in  fact  a  good 
instance  of  what  may  happen  without  a  "  foreign  loan." 
We  may  compare  the  similar  (personal)  exalted  height 
reached  in  Mexico  and  Peru  (above,  p.  113).  In  none  of 
these  cases  was  there  a  higher  religion  from  which  the  loan 
could  be  made.  Moreover,  the  pantheistic  tone  leading  to 
the  ^wa^'-monotheism  of  Egypt  was  native. 

The  first  significant  hymn  to  the  Sun  itself  is  that  of 
Amenhotep  III  (c.  1400  B.  c.),  "most  splendid  of  Egyptian 

1  Thutmose  carried  away  from  Lebanon  a  silver  statue  which  may 
have  been  the  counterpart  of  the  Palestinian  Mother-goddess.  This 
goddess  shows  the  marks  of  Hathor  and  even  wears  the  Egyp- 
tian uraeus  symbol.  In  1468  B.  c.  he  ruled  as  far  east  as  the  Eu- 
phrates. 


334  THE  HISTORY  OF  REUGIONS 

emperors."  x  In  this  hymn  the  sun-god,  who  is  still  known 
by  his  old  name,  is  acclaimed  as  the  god  "  begetter  not  be- 
gotten,1' by  whom  all  men  see,  the  disc  of  day,  creator 
of  all  and  giver  of  their  sustenance,  the  great  hawk  of 
the  sky,  the  primordial  being  who  made  himself,  the  sole 
lord  who  takes  captive  all  lands  every  day  —  that  is,  a 
universal  god.  But  the  god  is  also  called  here  "  a  mother, 
profitable  to  gods  and  men"  (a  humane  power  who  is 
both  father  and  mother).  The  son  of  this  king,  also 
called  Amenhotep  (IV),  succeeded  his  father  about  1375 
and  established  the  worship  of  Turn  or  Aton,  that  is  the 
disc  of  the  sun,  but  only  in  the  sense  of  power  or  real  be- 
ing of  the  sun  as  the  one  god.  The  old  symbol  of  the  sun 
was  the  hawk  or  falcon  and  the  triangle  contained  in  the 
pyramid,  but  as  these  were  purely  Egyptian  and  the  young 
king  desired  that  his  god  should  be  understood  through  all 
his  realms,  he  wished  a  symbol  to  correspond  and  took  for 
it  the  disc  with  rays  each  terminating  in  a  hand,  as  the 
old  theology  had  represented  the  sun  with  arms.  The  disc 
represented  the  heat  or  the  source  of  power,  the  essential 
power  of  the  sun.  The  king  made  himself  high  priest  of 
this  sun  at  Heliopolis,  discarding,  however,  all  the  physical 
notions  of  Re  and  Amon,  the  sun-boat,  and  the  voyage 
through  subterranean  caverns.  This  god  was  in  fact  a 
sun-god  only  in  name;  he  was  a  one  god  and  as  such  op- 
posed to  all  other  worship.  The  young  king  gave  up  poli- 
tics for  religion ;  he  became  a  zealot,  discarded  his  own 
name  because  it  contained  the  word  Amen  (Amon)hotep 
and  changed  it  to  "Aton  is  satisfied"  (ikhn-aton),  ex- 
punged from  all  the  monuments  the  word  Amon,2  even  in 
his  father's  name,  and  treated  thus  all  other  gods.  Finally, 
he  left  Thebes  and  built  a  new  capital  as  the  centre  of  solar 
monotheism  or  pantheism. 

1  Breasted,    op.    cit.,   p.   315.     Kings    of   this    period   traded   with 
Arabians  and  worked  the  mines  of  Sinai. 

2  To  destroy  the  power  with  the  name.    Thus  Isis  obtains  power 
over  Re  when  she  learns  his  name  by  a  trick,  according  to  an  old 
myth. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  335 

The  hymns  to  this  god  are  the  highest  expression  of  reli- 
gious thought  in  Egypt.  Aton  is  thus  addressed : 

"  Thy  dawning  is  beautiful  in  the  horizon  of  the  sky  [the 
Horizon-Horus  was  part  of  his  name],  O  living  Aton,  Begin- 
ning of  life!  .  .  .  Thou  art  all  (Re)  and  thy  rays  encompass 
all  lands;  all  hast  thou  made,  all  thou  carriest  away  captive. 
.  .  .  Creator  of  the  germ  and  maker  of  the  seed,  thou  givest 
life  to  the  son  in  the  body  of  the  mother,  soothing  him  that  he 
may  not  weep,  nursing  him  in  the  womb,  giving  breath  to 
animate  all.  When  in  the  shell  the  fledgling  chirps  in  the  egg, 
thou  givest  him  breath  to  preserve  him  alive,  and  when  thou 
hast  brought  him  to  burst  the  shell,  then  cometh  he  forth  from 
the  egg  to  chirp  with  all  his  might.  Manifold  are  thy  works, 
sole  God,  whose  power  none  other  possesseth.  Thou  hast  cre- 
ated the  earth  according  to  thy  understanding  [heart]  sole  God, 
[beside  whom  there  is  no  other]  ;  when  thou  wast  alone  didst 
thou  create,  men  and  cattle,  large  and  small,  all  that  go  upon 
their  feet,  all  that  are  on  high,  all  that  fly  with  wings,  and  also 
the  foreign  lands,  Syria  and  Kush  (besides)  this  land  (of 
Egypt).  Thou  settest  each  in  his  place,  thou  providest  all 
their  needs ;  every  one  has  his  possessions  and  the  days  of  each 
are  reckoned;  diverse  are  their  tongues,  their  forms  and  their 
skins ;  thou  hast  made  different  the  strangers.  All  the  lands  far 
away  —  thou  makest  their  life,  a  Nile  hast  thou  set  in  the  sky 
for  them  when  it  falls  (as  rain)  making  waves  upon  moun- 
tains and  like  the  great  flood  watering  their  fields.  O  how 
excellent  are  thy  designs,  O  Lord,  that  there  is  a  Nile  in  the 
sky  for  strangers  and  for  the  cattle  of  every  land.  But  our 
Nile  cometh  for  Egypt  from  the  lower  world.  Thou  makest  the 
seasons,  thou  nourishest  the  gardens  with  thy  rays  as  a  mother 
with  her  breasts;  even  the  sky  afar  hast  thou  made,  millions 
of  forms  thou  makest,  shining  as  living  Aton,  dawning,  glitter- 
ing, going  ever  and  ever  returning;  through  thyself  alone  thou 
makest  millions  of  forms.  And  thou  art  he  who  art  in  my 
heart ;  none  knowest  thee,  save  me,  thy  son  Ikhnaton,  whom  thou 
hast  enlightened  in  thy  ways  and  might.  Thou  art  the  life  of 
life;  through  thee  men  live." 

Shall  we  say  that  Ikhnaton  was  pantheist  or  monotheist? 
Most  of  his  hymn  has  perished,  for  it  was  copied  in  only 
one  tomb ;  parts  of  it  or  other  short  hymns  are  found  in 
other  tombs  at  Amarna.  A  few  verses  from  these  show 
much  the  same  thought: 


336  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

"  Beautiful  is  thy  rising,  O  living  lord  of  eternity,  Aton ; 
thy  glow  brings  life  to  all  hearts;  thou  fillest  Egypt  with  thy 
love ;  God,  creator,  maker  of  all,  men  and  cattle  large  and  small, 
trees  that  grow  in  the  soil,  they  live  when  thou  dawnest,  father 
and  mother  of  all;  they  see  by  means  of  thee  and  ever  their 
heart  rejoices  because  of  seeing  thee,  when  thou  dawnest  as 
their  lord.  When  thou  settest  in  the  western  horizon,  they 
sleep  after  the  manner  of  the  dead,  their  heads  wrapped  up, 
their  nostrils  closed,  until  in  the  morning  thou  risest ;  until  thou 
risest  in  the  eastern  horizon.  They  lift  up  their  arms  to  adore 
thee;  thou  makest  hearts  live  through  thy  beauty;  yea,  men  live 
when  thou  sendest  forth  thy  rays  and  every  land  rejoices.  Sing- 
ing, music,  and  shoutings  of  joy  are  all  in  the  hall  of  the  god" 
(the  benben,  pyramid). 

This  king,  who  got  tribute  even  from  the  Aegaeans,  was 
not  destined  to  succeed  in  his  plan  of  ousting  the  old  gods. 
Scarcely  had  he  died  when  his  work  was  undone,  and  a 
conspiracy  of  priests  reinstated  the  old  cult.  This  panthe- 
istic religion  was,  therefore,  somewhat  like  that  which  we 
have  seen  arise  elsewhere  as  an  individual  belief,  but  it 
acquires  special  dignity  from  its  early  occurrence  and  the 
philosophical  basis  for  the  belief.  Aton  is  a  pantheistic, 
almost  monotheistic  god.  He  is  the  only  god  but  he  is 
in  his  creation,  as  it  is  said,  "  thou  art  far,  but  thy  rays 
are  on  earth."  He  is  god  in  nature.  "  The  flowers  of  the 
marshes  are  drunk  with  the  god;  the  birds  lift  their  wings 
in  adoring  him;  his  beams  are  in  the  depths  of  the  sea." 
But  if  Ikhnaton  was  "  the  first  individual  in  history,"  x  in 
rejecting  time-hallowed  myths  and  standing  as  a  being  apart 
from  his  predecessors,  he  was  peculiarly  lacking  in  judg- 
ment. The  people  he  governed  he  forced  to  worship  his 
god,  frightening  laity  and  priests  alike  to  bow  to  this  di- 
vinity alone  —  till  it  was  inevitable  that  the  reaction  should 
completely  overthrow  his  purpose.  Thereafter  only  an 
echo  here  and  there  survived;  the  faith  of  Aton  was  done 
away~  with,  but  Atum-Re  retained  some  of  his  marks,  the 
monotheistic  phraseology  was  kept  more  or  less,  the  feeling 

1  Breasted,  op.  cit.,  p.  339. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  337 

that  the  god  was  in  man  remained,  the  personal  element 
which  makes  a  direct  bond  between  worshipper  and  god 
persisted.  The  sun-god,  restored  under  his  old  name,  was 
now  the  god  of  the  poor,  the  god  who  hears  the  prayers 
of  all,  who  brings  the  Nile  for  all,  but  who  also  like  Osiris 
judges  all;  Amon-Re  "  assigneth  him  that  sinneth  to  the 
fire  and  the  just  to  the  West/'  In  this  he  resumes  the 
function  of  Re  as  judge  of  righteousness,  as  he  appeared 
long  before  the  Osiris  cult.  In  the  early  texts,  Re  is  al- 
ready a  god  of  truth,  piety,  and  pity,  and  it  is  not  till  toward 
the  end  of  the  pyramid  age  that  Osiris  becomes  ethical  and 
judge  of  ethics.  One  further  conception,  that  of  Re  as 
the  perfect  god,  not  only  as  the  good  shepherd,  as  he  is 
depicted  in  early  texts,  but  as  the  restorer  of  the  happy  age 
after  the  deplorable  tumults  of  the  tenth  Dynasty,  about 
2160,  when  the  Feudal  Age  began,  has  led  to  the  view  that 
this  is  a  Messianic  teaching.  We  possess  the  complaint 
of  one  Ipuwer,  who  laments  the  sad  condition  of  the  land. 
At  the  end  of  his  lamentation  the  sage  contrasts  the  pres- 
ent with  the  past,  a  happy  time,  and  cries  out,  "  Where  is 
the  god  today  who  hath  no  evil  in  his  heart,  doth  he  sleep? 
Behold  his  might  is  not  seen."  Now  this  does  not  seem 
like  a  prediction  or  even  like  a  hopeful  expression,  and  to 
call  it  "  Messianism  nearly  fifteen  hundred  years  before  its 
appearance  among  the  Hebrews "  is  an  exaggeration  or 
even  contradiction  of  the  data,  for  we  are  not  entitled  to  add 
"  as  yet "  to  the  last  clause,  and  the  whole  cry  is  one  of 
despair  without  help  or  hope.1 

Some  rather  forcible  analogies  may  be  pointed  out  be- 
tween the  development  of  Egyptian  religion  and  that  of  the 
Hebrews,  even  if  we  ignore  Messianic  hopes.  Thus  the 
nature  gods  yield  their  functions,  as  such,  and  become  in- 
Otherwise  Lange,  followed  by  Breasted  (op.  cit.,  p.  212:  "This 
is  but  the  earliest  emergence  of  a  social  idealism  which  among  the 
Hebrews  we  call  "Messianism"),  who  concludes  that  it  may  have 
been  the  Admonitions  of  Ipuwer  which  inspired  the  Hebrews  with 
the  idea  of  a  Messiah.  But  the  Egyptians'  ideal  is  of  the  past  rather 
than  of  the  future. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

terested  in  man,  being  spirits  with  the  same  interests  as 
those  of  man;  the  upholding  of  moral  laws  becomes  their 
office.  Again,  the  many  gods  become  unified,  are  on  their 
way  to  unity  long  before  they  are  recognized  as  one  god. 
Life  hereafter  is  only  for  a  few  of  nobler  sort,  who  live 
with  the  sky-god.  But  the  great  god  is  still  restricted  to 
a  small  province.  With  enlargement  of  the  political  hori- 
zon the  god  also  is  enlarged;  with  political  disaster,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  wail  of  hopelessness  and  scepticism  is  heard. 
Then  too  the  paternal  side  of  monotheism  produces  the 
sense  of  personal  piety  and  then  appear  the  individuals, 
preacher  and  psalmist,  voicing  this  sense  of  personal  re- 
sponsibility, as  well  as  continuing  the  sense  of  social  justice 
derived  from  antiquity.  Finally  in  the  substitution  of  magic 
and  form  for  ethical  verities,  as  when  even  the  sinner  can 
magically  compel  his  heart  not  to  testify  against  him,  and 
when  the  priest  and  sacerdotalism  take  the  place  of  inward 
piety,  are  involved  decadence  and  fall  —  points  admirably 
brought  out  in  the  work  of  Professor  Breasted  already  cited. 
But  we  cannot  abandon  the  Egyptian  religion  without 
consideration  of  a  few  more  points.  What  strikes  one 
most  strongly  is  that  the  people  are  intensely  prosaic,  not 
romantic,  not  very  imaginative,  not  at  all  philosophic.  A 
few  great  minds  think  great  thoughts,  a  few  love  beauty; 
but  the  people  as  a  whole  are  repellantly  material,  their 
minds  are  primitive  minds,  thinking  always  in  concrete 
images;  their  virtues  are  practical.  Again,  an  unbiassed 
view  of  the  religion  shows  that  the  concrete  imagery  of 
the  mass  made  it  necessary  for  them  to  preserve  the  rudest 
conceptions.  In  the  case  of  Osiris,  plants  sprout  from  his 
body.  In  the  celebration  of  his  resurrection,  the  "  passion 
play  "  was  a  rude  contest  between  the  forces  of  good  and 
evil  carried  out  by  the  crowd  of  worshippers  whose  reli- 
gious zeal  voiced  itself  in  war-cries  and  resulted  in  a  free 
fight,  where  heads  were  broken  and  lives  were  lost.  Nor 
must  we  forget  that  the  popular  conception  of  Osiris  was 
that  of  a  phallic  god,  whose  effigy  was  carried  through  the 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  339 

streets  in  a  howling  Bacchanalian  procession,  in  which  the 
phallic  sign  was  conspicuously  exaggerated;  such  traits  in 
short  as  we  find  in  other  nature-religions. 

Since  Osiris  was  the  chief  god  of  Egypt  for  some  two 
thousand  years,  we  may  well  close  this  account  of  the  na- 
tional religion  with  a  closer  examination  of  those  features 
which  made  the  strongest  appeal  to  his  worshippers.  Let 
us  assume  for  the  nonce  an  Egyptian  environment.  Our 
great  god  incorporates  that  spirit  of  productivity  which 
shows  itself  in  the  source  of  life,  the  Nile,  and  in  the  field 
made  verdant  and  fruitful  by  him.  Long  since  he  was  king 
of  our  land,  the  son  of  Earth,  who  had  given  him  this  land 
to  care  for.  His  rule  was  beneficent,  he  established  jus- 
tice and  slew  his  foes.  Beside  him  stood  ever  his  sister- 
wife,  Isis,  who  cared  for  him  and  protected  him,  as  queen 
of  the  land.  Osiris  ruled  the  North,  but  in  the  South  was 
his  brother  Set,  storm,  darkness,  desolation,  opposed  to 
light  and  love  and  bounti fulness.  Set  prevailed,  either * 
luring  the  good  god  into  ambush  or  openly  assassinating 
and  dismembering  him ;  at  any  rate,  "  his  brother  Set  felled 
him  to  earth-"  (some  say,  he  was  drowned).  But  when 
Isis  heard  of  this  she  mourned  and  searched  for  her  hus- 
band, "  sadly  going  through  this  land  nor  stopping  till 
she  found  him  " ;  and  at  last  she  found  him  at  Byblos  or 
Abydos  (two  versions).  Isis  and  Nephthys  her  sister  to- 
gether searched  and  found  him,  in  the  form  of  birds  going 
hither  and  thither,  and  at  last  discovering  his  body  (or  col- 
lecting it)  they  embalmed  it  (or  Anubis  came  from  heaven 
to  do  this)  ;  but  out  of  his  tomb  grew  a  sycamore  which 
embraced  the  body  of  Osiris,  symbol  of  the  god's  imperish- 
able life,  and  out  of  him  even  dead  came  forth  life  for 
Isis,  who  bore  him  a  son  to  avenge  him.  This  was  Horus, 
who,  grown  strong,  came  forth  from  the  Delta,  where  Set 
had  sought  to  slay  him,  and  finally  overthrew  the  southern 
god  ;  but  in  the  conflict  he  lost  an  eye.  Then  the  god  Thoth, 

1  Here  and  below  two  versions  of  the  tale  are  given. 


340  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  wise  god,  spat  upon  the  wound  and  healed  it,  but  Horus 
took  the  eye  and  found  Osiris  and  by  giving  him  the  eye 
brought  him  back  to  life,  reuniting  his  dismembered  limbs 
(or  taking  off  the  bandages  of  the  embalmed  corpse). 
Then  came  the  triumphant  cry :  "  He  wakes,  Osiris  wakes, 
the  weary  god  awakes  and  stands ;  he  controls  his  body 
again.  Stand  up,  thou  shalt  not  end,  thou  shalt  not  perish." 
This  is  the  cry  that  has  echoed  through  the  years,  "thou 
shalt  not  perish."  But  Set  was  judged  in  the  tribunal  of 
the  gods,  for  the  strife  between  them  was  adjudicated  by 
the  divine  Enneads,  and  Osiris  was  vindicated.  And  Thoth 
gave  the  verdict :  "  All  the  gods  are  satisfied,  all  the  gods 
of  the  earth,  all  gods  south  and  north,  west  and  east,  gods 
of  the  nomes  and  gods  of  the  cities."  And  Set  from  that 
time  on  bore  Osiris  upon  his  back,  as  Atlas  bears  the  earth.1 
But  Osiris  was  proclaimed  king. 

This  is  the  drama,  the  overthrow  of  Set,  which  the  pas- 
sion play  presents  in  eight  scenes  year  by  year.  And  now 
let  us  turn  to  the  final  scene,  where  Osiris,  judge  of  the 
dead,  receives  the  soul.  For  each  must  die,  but  each,  if 
good  and  kind  in  life,  dies  but  to  rise  again;  each  is  him- 
self an  Osiris.  So  the  soul,  armed  with  magical  formulas 
to  guide  it  safely  to  the  judgment  hall,  comes  at  last  be- 
fore the  god  who  died  and  rose  again  and  who  now  stands 
as  judge  of  all  the  dead.  Forty-two  gods  sit  around  him 
and  the  soul  makes  its  plea :  "  I  have  not  slain ;  nor 
robbed ;  I  have  not  stirred  up  strife ;  I  have  not  lied ;  I 
have  not  lost  my  temper;  I  have  not  committed  adultery; 
I  have  not  blasphemed  the  god ;  nor  reviled  the  king ;  nor 
stolen  temple-food,"  etc.,  etc.  Then  the  soul  speaks  to 
the  gods :  "  Hail  to  you,  gods,  report  no  evil  of  me  to 
this  god  whom  you  follow ;  speak  the  truth  for  me  to  the 
god  of  all;  save  me  from  babi  (the  Devouress),  who  eats 
the  entrails  of  the  dead  on  the  day  of  judgment.  I  come 
to  you  without  sin,  I  have  done  that  wherewith  the  gods 

1Breasted,  op.  cit.,  p.  36. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  341 

are  satisfied.  I  have  given  bread  to  the  hungry,  cloth- 
ing to  the  naked,  a  ferry  to  him  without  a  boat.  I  have 
given  offerings  to  the  gods  and  for  the  dead.  I  am  pure 
of  mouth  and  of  hands."  Then  the  god  Osiris  upon  his 
throne  with  Isis  and  Nephthys  behind  him  and  the  sun- 
god's  Ennead,  the  Nine  Gods  of  Heliopolis,  look  upon  "  the 
balance  of  Re  "  (both  indications  of  the  originally  solar 
court  of  justice)  and  as  the  balance  is  manipulated  by  Anu- 
bis,  Thoth  presides  over  the  pen  and  writing-tablet,  to  re- 
cord the  verdict.  Behind  him  lurks  the  Devouress,  to  de- 
vour the  sinner  if  the  verdict  goes  against  him.  Destiny 
and  the  two  goddesses  of  birth  look  on,  as  do  the  divine 
spirits  called  Taste  and  Intelligence  (in  some  cases  Truth 
escorts  the  soul  into  the  hall).  Anubis  calls  for  the  heart 
of  the  dead  man.  This  is  put  into  the  balance  and  on  the 
other  side  a  feather,  emblem  of  truth.  Then  Thoth  says, 
"  I  have  judged.  No  sin  is  found  in  him.  His  soul  is 
justified  by  the  great  balances,"  and  the  Nine  Gods  say, 
"  He  is  sinless,  the  Devouress  shall  have  no  power  over 
him ;  let  him  have  the  bread  of  Osiris  and  a  domain  in  the 
field  of  offerings."  Horus  then  leads  him  to  Osiris,  saying, 
"  His  heart  has  come  forth  righteous ;  he  has  no  sin ;  Thoth 
has  judged  him;  he  has  written  it  down;  the  Nine  Gods 
have  spoken."  Then  the  soul  kneels  to  Osiris  and  says, 
"  Behold  me,  I  have  not  sinned,  I  have  not  lied ;  let  me  be 
of  thy  beloved  and  of  thy  followers."  This  is  the  end  of 
the  drama.  The  god  who  died  an  innocent  death  receives 
into  his  kingdom  his  follower,  if  he,  too,  be  innocent.  No 
sinner  may  live  with  him;  the  beast  that  rends  the  entrails 
devours  him  who  is  found  unworthy.  Unquestionably  a 
moral  power  underlay  this  belief.  Yet  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  the  moral  side  of  religion  underlay  also  the  cult 
of  the  sun-god.  And  it  must  be  said  of  both  cults  and 
of  the  combination,  which  results  in  Osiris  instead  of  Re 
being  the  judge  hereafter,  that  magic  goes  hand  in  hand 
with  morality.  If  in  the  final  judgment  morality  decides 
the  issue,  yet  magical  formulas  not  at  all  moral  are  neces- 


342  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

sary  to  bring  the  dead  man  before  the  court,  failing  which 
he  is  liable  to  go  astray,  become  a  homeless  or  impious 
ghost,  irrespective  of  his  previous  morality. 

The  sun-cult,  with  its  monotheistic  tendency,  as  com- 
pared with  the  Osiris  cult,  became  rather  a  philosophy 
suited  for  higher  minds,  while  the  Osiris  cult  appealed  to 
the  people  by  virtue  of  its  human  sympathy.  Osiris  had 
the  advantage  attaching  to  all  gods  who  have  themselves 
been  human.1 

In  summing  up  the  religion  of  Egypt,  we  may  say  that 
the  gods  are  primarily  of  two  sorts,  animal  gods  and  nat- 
ural phenomena.  Half -animal  gods  are  a  later  product. 
Despite  their  forms  they  are  wholly  anthropopathic.  That 
local  gods  imply,  as  Petrie  asserts,  an  antecedent  mono- 
theism, is  an  erroneous  induction.  Each  little  place  had 
its  own  little  Power  as  chief  god,  but  it  also  had  others. 
The  gods  in  general  appear  to  be  indigenous  local  spirits, 
later  synthesized,  as  people  came  together.  The  Osiris  cult 
is  native  to  the  Delta.  In  it  is  found  the  prototype  of  two 
great  religious  features,  which  redeem  the  inanity  of  the 
general  Egyptian  cult.  The  first  is  the  image  of  the  man- 
god,  suffering,  dying,  resurrected,  and  become  the  saviour 
of  men.  Not  less  remarkable  (and  rarer)  is  the  ethical 
importance  of  the  belief,  unknown  to  the  early  Semites,  that 
a  future  beyond  the  grave  is  conditioned  by  the  ethical 
quality  of  the  life  here.2 

Unimportant,  though  of  some  interest,  is  the  fact  that 
the  story  of  Joseph  and  Potiphar's  wife  is  like  an  old  Egyp- 
tian story ; 3  that  the  Christian  agape  and  monastic  estab- 

1  On  the  relation  between  this  myth  and  others  of  like  character, 
in  which  a  dying  man-god  is  revered  as  type  of  resurrection  after 
death,  see  particularly  Frazer's  Adonis  Attis,  Osiris,  London,  1914. 

2  Compare  H.  O.  Taylor,  Ancient  Ideals,  New  York,  1906. 

3  Dr.  Daniel  Voelter,  Die  Patriarchen  Israel's  und  die  Aegyptische 
Mythologie,  Leiden,  1912,  has  sought  to  show  that  the  whole  his- 
tory of  Joseph  is  nothing  but  the  Osiris  myth  in  the  form  of  an 
Israelite    legend;    but   his    conclusion    seems    forced.    The    Joseph 
story  may  have  inspired  or  reflected  the  Egyptian   (1209-1205  B.C.) 
Tale  of  Two  Brothers.    Compare  on  this  tale  Renouf-Sayce,  Rec- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  EGYPT  343 

lishment  may  have  come  from  Egypt  (the  Therapeutae  of 
Egypt  who  had  an  agape,  were,  however,  a  Jewish  sect)  ; 
that  the  Madonna  and  Child  as  an  art- form  is  an  imitation 
of  Isis-Horus;  and  that  a  Logos-germ  may  be  seen  in  the 
Creator-god's  creation  through  the  thought  or  word.  He- 
braic bull-worship  and  serpent-worship  may  have  been 
brought  from  Egypt  or  may  as  well  have  been  native 
products  due  to  the  same  stimulus. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Alfred  Wiedemann,  Religion  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  Lon- 
don, 1897 ;  Die  Toten  und  ihre  Reiche  im  Glauben  der 
alien  Aegypten,  Leipzig,  1900. 

G.  Steindorff,  The  Religion  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  New 
York,  1905. 

J.  H.  Breasted,  A  History  of  Egypt,  2nd  ed.,  New  York,  1911 ; 
Development  of  Religion  and  Thought  in  Ancient  Egypt, 
New  York,  1912. 

W.  M.  Flinders  Petrie,  A  History  of  Egypt  from  the  Earliest 
Times,  New  York,  1905 ;  The  Religion  of  Ancient  Egypt, 
London,  1908;  Egypt  and  Israel,  New  York,  1911. 

E.  A.  Wallis  Budge,  The  Gods  of  the  Egyptians,  London,  1904; 
Egyptian  Idea  of  the  Future  Life,  London,  1899;  The 
Book  of  the  Dead,  London,  1899.  The  Book  of  the  Dead 
has  also  been  translated  by  P.  Le  Page  Renouf  and  E.  H. 
Naville,  London,  1893-1907. 

W.  Max  Miiller,  Mythology  of  All  Races,  vol.  xii,  Boston,  1918. 

ords  of  the  Past,  London,  1889-93,  New  Series,  vol.  ii,  p.  I37ff., 
and  Sir  G.  Maspero,  Les  Conies  populaires  de  I'Egypte  ancienne, 
Paris,  1882,  now  translated  as  Popular  Stories  of  Ancient  Egypt, 
London,  1915,  by  Mr.  Johns  from  the  fourth  French  edition. 


CHAPTER  EIGHTEEN 

BABYLONIAN   AND   ASSYRIAN   RELIGION 

THE  foundations  of  Babylonian  history  have  been  mate- 
rially strengthened  in  the  last  decades.  Recently  discovered 
inscriptions  reveal  records  of  kings  of  the  fifth  millennium 
B.  c. ;  new  dynasties  have  been  found ;  fresh  light  has  been 
cast  upon  the  relations  of  Mesopotamia  with  the  West.  A 
certain  readjustment  of  dates  has  in  consequence  seemed 
to  be  necessary.  Sargon,  whose  control  of  the  Euphrates 
valley  foreshadowed  Semitic  supremacy,  may  be  restored 
to  his  old  position  as  king  circa  3800  B.  c.  instead  of  2800 ; 
Hammurabi  (perhaps  Amraphel,  Gen.  xiv.  i)  may  be  of 
2200  B.  c.,  instead  of  1950  B.  c.  But  some  scholars  still 
think  it  impossible  to  ascribe  so  remote  a  date  to  Sargon, 
though  Nabonidus  (555-539  B.C.)  says  that  Naram-Sin, 
son  of  Sargon,  lived  3200  years  before  his  time  and  to 
other  scholars  this  statement  appears  to  be  supported  by 
the  newly  found  lists  of  kings,  among  whom  figure  Etana 
(Ethan  of  the  Bible)  and  Gilgamesh,  and  even  Tamnuz, 
hitherto  known  only  as  legendary  and  divine  beings.  A 
conservative  estimate  may,  however,  refer  the  beginnings 
of  Babylonian  history  to  at  least  the  fourth  millennium 
B.  c. 

That  Babylonian  culture  was  at  first  largely  Sumerian  is 
generally  admitted.  But  whence  the  (future)  Babylonians 
first  came,  and  whether  they  found  prior  Sumerian  settle- 
ments north  of  the  Persian  Gulf  is  not  certain.  All  that 
we  know  positively  about  the  early  period  is  that  long  be- 
fore the  supremacy  of  Babylon  there  were  various  small 
southern  sites,  Nippur,  Lagash,  Erech,  etc.,  apparently  of 
Sumerian  origin,  while  farther  north  Agade  (Akkad)  and 

344 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  345 

Sippar  represented  a  primitive  Semitic  stock.  Both  groups, 
separately  or  together,  were  at  sundry  times  opposed  to 
Elam,  till  Hammurabi,  sixth  king  of  an  entirely  new  dynasty 
(the  first  Babylonian),  of  Amorite  origin,  routed  Elam  once 
for  all,  and  Babylon  became  supreme  till  overthrown  by  the 
Kassites  and  Assyrians.1 

The  Sumerian  population  of  Lagash,  once  the  chief 
southern  town,  for  defence  against  the  Semites  combined 
with  other  Sumerians  and  gradually  formed  a  confederacy 
of  the  Southern  Sumerians  against  the  Semites  of  the 
North  and  East.  The  first  king  to  become  king  of  both 
North  and  South  was  Sargon,  whose  concealed  birth  and 
escape  in  a  box  set  afloat  on  the  river  is  a  parallel  to  that 
of  Moses,  and  also  to  that  of  a  hero  of  the  Hindu  epic. 
Sargon  became  king  of  Sumer  and  Akkad,  but  this  dynasty 
did  not  last  long.  Shamash,  sun-god,  was  the  chief  deity  of 
Akkad  or  Agade.  A  patesi  or  lord  of  Lagash  was  Gudea, 
whose  religious  zeal  aided  the  development  of  temple- 
structures.2 

About  2000  B.  c.,  Hammurabi  of  the  first  Babylonian  dy- 
nasty welded  all  the  people  of  the  various  Sumerian  and 
Semitic  strongholds  into  one  State,  improved  the  old  in- 
herited code  of  laws,  and  gave  a  permanent  form  to  the 
discordant  religious  elements,  in  that  the  special  god  of 
Babylon  was  made  representative  (substitute)  for  the  city- 
gods,  who  inevitably  had  to  disappear  or  become  connected 
with  the  great  god.  The  older  Semitic  and  Sumerian  gods, 
sun,  moon,  and  Ishtar,  were  kept  thus  under  the  Baby- 

1  Who  the  Sumerians  were,  even  of  what  stock,  no  one  knows. 
Apparently  they  came  down  from  the  eastern  or  northern  hills,  as 
their  gods  were  described  as  of  the  mountain  (house).    They  had  a 
predilection    for   the    moon-god   and   for    sundry   goddesses    (Nin- 
divinities)    afterwards   semitized  as   male    (gods  whose   names   re- 
tained the  nm-).     The  first  three  kings  of  the  Assyrians  were  of 
Hittite  stock  and  the  Hittites  were  perhaps  Aryans. 

2  According  to  the  old  reckoning,  Sargon  and  his  son  Naram-Sin 
would  belong  to  the  middle  of  the  third   millennium  and   Gudea 
would  be  dated  c.  2350  B.  c.    They   may  all   be   much   older    (see 
above).    Naram-Sin  was  one  of  the  few  deified  kings. 


346  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Ionian  (Amorite)  god  Marduk;  the  Amorite  Adad  or  thun- 
derer  (Rammon)  was  added  to  the  pantheon;  and  the  gods 
of  the  small  towns  became  relatives  of  the  great  Marduk, 
whose  compound  name  probably  means  Amorite-sun-god. 

The  influence  of  this  Babylonian  religion  upon  the  West- 
ern world  used  to  be  regarded  as  overwhelming ;  but  it  was 
less  early,  less  direct,  and  altogether  less  important  than 
was  once  assumed.  It  probably  had  no  early  influence  upon 
Egypt  and  very  little  upon  Greece.  The  mother-goddess 
worship,  conspicuous  in  all  Babylonia,  was  not  confined  to 
Mesopotamia  but  was  generally  Semitic.  Certain  legends, 
such  as  the  story  of  Actaeon  devoured  by  his  hounds,  and 
Adonis  mourned  by  Aphrodite,  drifted  into  Greek  mythology 
from  Semitic  sources  (not  necessarily  Babylonian),  but 
Greek  religion  was  not  affected  by  Babylon  in  any  impor- 
tant phase.1  Even  the  neighbouring,  though  later,  religion 
of  Zoroaster  was  not  markedly  affected  by  the  Babylonian 
cult.2 

The  Assyrians,  from  Ashur  in  the  north,  appear  to  have 
been  at  first  in  close  contact  with  the  Hittites.  But  the 
Assyrians  were  still  a  rough  mountain  race  when  Baby- 
lon was  already  a  commercial  city.  Like  all  these  peoples 
they  worshipped  a  god  of  the  clan  (Ashur)  as  well  as  the 
sun-  and  storm-gods.  The  original  inhabitants  of  Ashur 
seem  to  have  been  neither  Sumerians  nor  Semites,3  but,  if 

1  Greek  mysteries  have  no  Semitic  counterpart.     Incense  came  to 
Greek  religion  from  the  East,  but  not  before  the  eighth  century. 
The  shepherd  loved  by  Ishtar  and  changed  by  her  into  a  leopard 
devoured  by  his  hounds  is  recast  as  Artemis,  Actaeon  and  the  stag 
(myth  not  religion).     Compare  Farnell,  Greece  and  Babylon,  Edin- 
burgh, 1911,  pp.  290  and  314. 

2  Anahita  as  a  form  of  the  fruitful  mother-goddess  was  probably 
a   late   adaptation.     Stress   has   been   laid   on    the    majesty   of   the 
Zoroastrian  god,  on  seven  as  a  holy  number,  etc.,  and  even  on  the 
fact  that  a  list  of  Assyrian  gods  contains  the  name  of  Ormuzd ; 
but  these  fail  to  prove  that  Zoroastrianism  was  drawn  from,  or  was 
even  influenced  materially  by  Babylonian  ideas.     Astral  gods  were 
not  early  but  late,  as  compared  with  the  original  Babylonian  pan- 
theon. 

3  King,  History  of  Babylon,  London,  1915,  p.  141. 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  347 

Hittite,  they  were  later  largely  reinforced  by  Semitic  ele- 
ments. They  are  first  heard  of  about  2400  B.  c.  From 
about  1800  B.  c.,  when  Hittite  power  centred  in  Asia  Minor, 
the  Assyrians  made  inroads  upon  Babylon,  but  they  did  not 
become  important  till  the  fifteenth  century.  Under  Tig- 
lath-Pileser  (1130-1100  B.C.)  they  conquered  Babylon, 
which  at  this  time  had  been  under  Kassite  dominion  (1750- 
1175  B.C.).  Assyrian  supremacy  is  represented  by  the 
great  names  of  Sennacherib  (705-681  B.C.),  Esarhaddon 
(680-668  B.C.),  and  Ashurbanipal  (668-626  B.C.).1  The 
seat  of  the  empire  had  been  transferred  first  to  Calah  and 
then  to  Ninevah.  Babylon  was  destroyed  in  689,  Ninevah 
in  606  B.  c.  Cyrus,  who  founded  the  Persian  empire  in  550 
B.  c.,  annexed  Media,  which  had  helped  Babylon  overthrow 
Assyria.  It  was  a  new  Babylon  which  Nebuchadrezzar  II 
built  (604-562  B.  c.)  ;  to  which,  after  besieging  and  taking 
Jerusalem  (597  and  586  B.C.,  2  Kg.  xxiv.),  he  transported 
the  Jews. 

But  as  the  Assyrians  became,  in  dress  and  language,  one 
with  the  Babylonians,  so  in  religion.  Except  for  Ashur 
and  a  special  predilection  for  the  Amorite  god  Adad-Ram- 
man,  the  Assyrian  pantheon  coincided  with  that  of  Babylon. 
This  again,  in  the  main,  united,  by  the  process  already 
described,  with  that  of  the  Sumerians,  Enlil  of  Nippur, 
Anu  of  Erech,  Ea  of  Eridu,  Nabu  of  Borsippa,  Nin  of 
Lagash  with  Bau,  the  great  Mother-goddess.  The  West- 
ern Semites,  however,  did  not  affect  female  divinities  ex- 
cept as  Ishtar  in  various  forms  or  names;  the  others  they 
let  die.  Thus  Nina,  a  water-goddess,  becomes  Nina  Ishtar 
of  Nineveh.  As  in  Egypt,  by  merging  gods  there  arose 
triads,  of  which  the  chief  was  Anu,  Enlil,  and  Ea  (sky, 
earth,  and  water).  Anu  of  Erech  was  sun  and  sky;  Enlil 

1  The  close  connection  of  these  kings  with  the  Western  Semites 
may  be  remembered  by  comparing  2  Kg.  xv.  19,  2gf . ;  ib.  xvi.  icf. 
(Ahaz)  ;  Sargon's  overthrow  of  Samaria,  722  B.C.;  Sennacherib's 
intercourse  with  Hezekiah,  2  Kg.  xx.  12;  Manasseh  as  vassal  of 
Esarhaddon  and  Ashurbanipal,  2  Kg.  xix. ;  2  Chron.  xxxiii.,  etc. 


348  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

of  Nippur  was  a  mountain-god  of  storm  and  earth;  and 
Ea  of  Eridu  was  representative  of  water  and  magical  wis- 
dom, either  because,  as  in  Scandinavian  myth,  the  two  are 
naturally  united,  or  because  the  priests  of  Ea  had  accumu- 
lated a  special  amount  of  magical  matter  and  the  god  had 
thus  become  authoritative.  Nebo  or  Nabu  (compare  Nebu- 
chadrezzar) was  a  water-god  of  Borsippa  later  subjected 
to  Bel-Marduk,  the  greater  god  across  the  river,  but  asso- 
ciated with  him:  "Bel  boweth;  Nebo  stoopeth  "  (Is.  xlvi. 
i;  Ix.  7).  With  the  rise  of  Babylonian  Marduk,  Ea  is 
made  father  and  Nebo  son  of  Marduk,  and  other  local  gods 
similar  in  nature  are  identified,  the  solar  element  as  Sha- 
mash,  Ninib,  Nusku,  Nergal,  Marduk;  the  lunar  element, 
as  Sin  and  Nannar  (northern  and  southern  representatives), 
with  Ningal  as  his  consort.  One  of  these,  Nergal,  was  a 
Kuthah  god  brought  into  Palestine  (722  B.C.).  He  was 
destructive  (war  and  pestilence)  and  thus  became  identi- 
fied with  Ninib,  sun  as  war-god.  While  most  of  the  female 
deities  were  merely  earth-spirits  or  aspects  of  their  male 
consorts,  Ereshkigal,  consort  of  Nergal,  was  a  still  im- 
portant mistress  of  the  under-world;  Bau  (above)  had  a 
great  New  Year's  festival;  and  Ishtar  or  Nana  of  Erech 
received  honour  everywhere,  both  as  a  war-goddess  and  as 
a  fertility-spirit.  As  Venus  she  was  regarded  as  the  daugh- 
ter of  the  Moon,  Sin.  As  moon-goddess  she  appears  as 
Ashtart  of  the  Phoenicians,  Astoreth  of  the  Canaanites. 
Her  symbols  are  dove  and  pomegranate,  a  voluptuous 
Venus  as  contrasted  with  war-like  Ishtar.  The  Assyrians 
called  her  Our  Lady,  Belit,  and  distinguished  between  the 
Ishtar  of  Arbela,  the  war-goddess,  and  Ishtar  of  Nineveh, 
the  voluptuous  goddess,  who  some  have  imagined  was  orig- 
inally Hittite. 

At  Babylon,  Anu,  Enlil,  and  Marduk,  as  a  triad,  show 
that  Ea  has  lost  to  his  "  son  "  the  third  place.  Marduk 
in  fact  at  first  interprets  and  then,  as  mediator,  ousts  his 
"  father  "  and  becomes  as  "  good  shepherd  "  the  type  of  a 
protecting  god.  He  is  usually  interpreted  as  an  Eridu  sun- 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  349 

god,  but  he  is  perhaps  rather  a  parallel  to  Amurru  of  the 
Amorites,  Ashur  of  the  Ashurites  or  Assyrians,  etc.,  a 
clan-god,  who  cared  in  every  way  for  his  people  and  so 
was  typified  as  god  of  sun  and  life  and  of  power  and  war. 

It  would  be  useless  to  analyse  all  the  triads  of  this  sort, 
Shamash,  Sin,  and  Ramman,  or  Nergal,  Ramman,  and 
Nana,  etc.  The  lesser  gods  are  grouped  as  Annunaki  and 
Igigi,  spirits  of  earth  and  heaven.  In  Babylon,  Marduk  as 
Bel-Marduk  absorbed  the  other  divine  powers,  as  he  took 
the  "  lofty  house  "  of  Ea  from  Eridu  and  set  it  up  in  his 
new  home.  By  thus  absorbing  gods  Marduk  might  have 
become  sole  deity,  but  neither  he  nor  Ashur  became  God, 
though  Ashur  as  the  sun,  yet  without  an  image,  was  even 
better  fitted  to  make  of  the  religion  a  monotheism,  espe- 
cially as  he  became  the  head  of  a  supreme  temporal  power.1 
To  meet  the  need  of  syncretism,  however,  old  hymns  ad- 
dressed to  other  gods  were  made  to  say  that  Marduk  was 
identical  with  each,  or  rather  that  each  was  Marduk,  in 
order  that  the  incantation,  in  which  names  had  to  be  used 
with  care,  might  be  effective.  So  tales  told  of  other  gods 
were  recast  in  honour  of  Marduk.  Marduk's  rival,  of  Bor- 
sippa,  Nabu,  regained  glory  in  the  West  as  god  of  wisdom 
(so  in  Moab)  and  culture,  as  well  as  water  and  agricul- 
ture. In  Assyria  he  became  the  god  of  the  stylus,  of 
scholars,  and  at  Borsippa  of  astrology. 

To  these  gods  were  made  sacrifices  of  animals,  bread, 
fruit,  wine,  milk,  all  ready  to  eat  and  actually  eaten  at  once 
by  the  priests,  a  communion  service  of  the  Mexican  type,  in 
which  gods  and  worshippers  share.  To  the  gods  were  sung 
hymns  mixed  deftly  with  old  magical  formulas,  so  that 
exorcism  united  with  requests  for  aid,  magic  with  religion. 
Both  divination  (see  below)  and  prayer  reveal  that  the 
Babylonians  were  true  Semites  after  the  western  type,  that 
is  they  cared  little  for  the  next  world  but  very  much  for 
this.  The  warlike  Assyrians  have  been  said  to  resemble 

1  He  was  represented,  like  Aton  in  Egypt,  by  a  disc,  inscribed 
with  a  bowman  as  sign  of  martial  power. 


35°  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  Romans,  with  whom  there  may  have  been  even  a  re- 
mote racial  affinity ;  in  contrast,  the  commercial  Babylonians 
resembled  their  own  kin,  Phoenicians  and  Carthaginians. 
For  the  striking  difference  between  Babylonian  and  Assyrian 
is  that  the  former  is  before  all  else  a  humane  business-man 
and  the  latter  is  a  cruel  blood-thirsty  warrior.  Hammu- 
rabi was  protagonist  of  peaceful  civilization;  Ashurbanipal 
delighted  to  pierce  his  captives*  eyes  with  his  own  hand. 
Hence  Assyria  had  no  native  civilization ;  she  had  to  absorb 
that  of  others.  The  Assyrians  were  eastern  Aztecs,  the 
Babylonians  they  conquered  were  their  Mayas.  What  is 
known  as  Assyrian  literature  is  the  literature  the  Assy- 
rians appropriated  and  possessed  by  right  of  conquest. 

Around  the  gods  have  gathered  Babylonian  tales  of  espe- 
cial interest  to  the  student  of  religions,  as  they  are  primitive 
parallels  to  the  Hebrew  legends.  Creation,  Adam,  Noah 
appear  here  in  a  ruder  form.  We  may  take  these  up  in 
their  Biblical  order. 

In  the  Babylonian  story,  creation  is  preceded  by  a  state 
in  which  chaos  and  order  struggle  as  personified  beings. 
When  "heaven  and  earth  were  nameless,"  is  the  time 
when  the  drama  begins.  Only  the  watery  waste  existed, 
called  Apsu,  Mummu,  and  Tiamat,  later  differentiated  into 
sweet  and  salt  waters.  Possibly  we  are  to  interpret  the 
two  as  producing  together  the  monsters  born  of  them  or 
of  Tiamat,  who  represents  the  barren  floods  of  Chaos,  her- 
self the  greatest  monster  (T'hom)  of  her  brood.  But  there 
is  no  attempt  to  revert  to  nothing;  even  earth  was,  only 
it  was  nameless.  "  floods  covered  heaven  and  earth." 
This  raises  the  question  whether  the  ensuing  struggle  was 
not  a  nature-myth  rather  than  a  real  creation-story.  The 
flood  and  storm  of  the  tale  are  interpreted  by  some  scholars 
as  wintry  phenomena  yielding  to  the  spring-time  sun-god. 
What  lay  back  of  Tiamat  and  Apsu  is  not  revealed.  Other 
accounts  make  the  gods  as  old  as  chaos.  Chaos  bred  mon- 
sters and  then  the  divine  Heaven  and  Earth,  as  Anshar  and 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  35 l 

Kishar,  ancestors  of  Anu,1  Enlil,  and  Ea,  prepared  for 
conflict,  to  maintain  order.  But  they  are  not  the  aggressors ; 
only  the  elements  of  disorder  are  aggressive.  The  eleven 
opposing  monsters  of  Chaos  are  created  by  Tiamat  and 
headed  by  Kingu,  to  whom  Tiamat  gives  the  tablets  of 
destiny  and  whom  she  makes  her  consort.  The  peace-loving 
gods  seem  to  fear :  they  send  a  messenger  to  Tiamat,  "  May 
her  liver  be  pacified,  her  heart  softened."  Here  the  ac- 
count becomes  confused  and  what  was  probably  depicted  in 
the  first  form  of  the  legend  as  the  victory  of  Ea  or  of  Anu 
(in  the  Erech  version  Anu  is  victor)  is  manipulated  in 
maiorem  gloriam  of  Marduk,  for  in  this  story  Marduk 
reigns.  In  this  version,  too,  Ea  and  Anu  appear  to  dispose 
of  Apsu  and  Mummu,  while  the  greater  Tiamat  is  reserved 
for  the  favourite  god.  At  any  rate,  we  next  see  Bel-Marduk, 
at  the  command  of  his  father,  going  joyfully  into  battle, 
after  preparing  for  the  combat  by  making  weapons,  bow, 
lance,  club,  lightning-bolt,  storm-winds,  and  a  net  where- 
with to  catch  Tiamat.  The  gods  get  drunk  with  joy,  an- 
ticipating victory  and  hailing  Marduk  as  already  lord  of 
the  universe.  On  Storm  (his  chariot)  he  rushes  forth, 
haloed  with  light,  from  which  Kingu  shrinks.  Him  follow 
the  seven  winds.  Tiamat,  however,  fears  him  not,  but 
when  Marduk  challenges  her,  she  fights,  "  raging  and  shak- 
ing with  fury,"  yet  all  in  vain.  For  Marduk  stifles  her 
with  a  poisonous  gas  ("evil  wind"),  and  then  transfixes 
her,  also  taking  the  tablets  from  Kingu  and  netting  the 
other  monsters.  But  Tiamat  he  cuts  in  two,  making  one 
half  of  her  the  sky,  which  is  then  bolted,  to  keep  the  wa- 
ters from  descending;  as  in  Genesis  the  upper  waters  are 
debarred  from  those  below  by  a  "  firmament."  Marduk 
completes  his  victory  by  retaining  the  names  and  powers 
of  the  gods,  given  him  for  the  fray,  and  assigns  them 
their  astrological  spheres  and  stellar  forms.2  He  then 

1  Anshar  and  Anu,  forms  of  the  same  word,  may  be  one. 

2  By  taking  the  "  names "  of  the  gods  he  assumes  their  powers. 


352  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

creates  man  out  of  his  blood  and  bone,  that  the  gods  may 
have  worshippers. 

This  myth  recalls  the  "  watery  waste  "  of  Genesis,  but 
only  remotely.  Man  is  here  blood-relation  of  his  god.  In 
the  corresponding  Sumerian  version,  creation  is  effected  by 
Aruru  with  Marduk  as  secondary  helpmate,  showing  the 
feminine  divinity  as  mother-goddess.  It  is  she,  perhaps 
one  with  Ishtar,  who  creates  Enkidu  out  of  clay. 

Another  story  suggests  Adam  and  his  fate.  Adapa  is 
a  worshipper  of  Ea.  He  is  catching  fish  near  his  lord's 
temple,  when  the  south  wind,  blowing  up  the  Persian  Gulf, 
overwhelms  him.  In  self-defence  Adapa  breaks  the  wings 
of  the  wind.  Anu,  being  wroth  at  this,  demands  that 
Adapa  shall  come  to  heaven  and  explain  his  act.  Ea  now 
advises  Adapa  what  to  do.  On  arriving  (Ea  says),  he  will 
be  offered  the  food  and  water  of  death  and  must  refuse 
them.  Adapa  goes  to  heaven  and  first  flatters  Tammuz, 
who  guards  the  gate,  by  telling  him  that  he  (Adapa)  is 
wearing  mourning,  not  described,  for  him.  Anu  accepts 
his  exculpation.  Then  all  the  gods  seem  kindly  disposed. 
Apparently  thinking  that,  since  the  man  has  got  to  heaven, 
he  might  as  well  be  made  immortal,  they  offer  him  the  food 
and  drink  of  life.  But,  with  Ea's  warning  in  mind,  Adapa 
refuses  both,  and  so  fails  to  attain  immortality.  So  in 
Genesis  iii.  22  it  is  said,  "  lest  he  put  forth  his  hand  and 
take  also  of  the  tree  of  life  and  eat,  and  live,  for  ever." 
Adapa  also  puts  on  clothes  given  by  the  gods,  but  not  to 
cover  his  nakedness.  Sayce  regards  Adapa  as  one  with 
Adam,  whose  story,  however,  has  to  do  with  two  trees, 
one  of  knowledge  and  one  of  life.  Yahweh  Elohim  in  one 
does  not  wish  man  to  become  immortal.  The  recast  Hebrew 
form  prohibits  the  eating  of  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowl- 
edge, with  the  implication  that,  if  he  obey,  man  may  remain 
in  the  garden  for  ever ;  as  Gen.  iii.  3,  which  says,  "  ye  shall 
not  eat  of  it  or  touch  it,  lest  ye  die,"  must  originally  have 

e  "  set  up  the  stars  as  likenesses  "  of  the  gods  and  also  "  fixed 
the  year." 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  353 

been  a  reference  to  a  deadly  fruit.  So  the  serpent  says, 
"  Ye  shall  not  die,"  pretending  that  it  is  not  the  tree  of 
death  but  of  life.  The  substitution  of  a  tree  of  knowledge 
(of  good  and  evil)  for  the  death-tree  appears  to  be  a  later 
touch.  The  serpent  also  may  be  Babylonian,  as  a  seal- 
cylinder  contains  a  group  of  a  man  and  woman  and  serpent 
about  a  tree  (of  life).1 

The  tree  of  life  appears  also  in  the  Gilgamesh  legend. 
Gilgamesh  may  have  been  an  Elamite  king  who  conquered 
Erech.  His  name,  as  already  stated,  is  found  in  dynastic 
lists.  In  the  story,  he  is  a  demigod  hero.  To  overcome 
Gilgamesh,  the  creator-goddess  (Aruru;  see  above)  forms 
a  man  of  heavenly  sort  ("  of  Anu  ")  :  "  Aruru  washes  her 
hands ;  she  takes  a  bit  of  clay ;  she  throws  it  on  the  ground ; 
so  she  creates  Enkidu."  He  is  an  inhuman,  hairy  crea- 
ture living  with  animals.  But,  protected  by  Shamash,  by 
means  of  a  hunter  (sadu)  and  a  woman,2  Gilgamesh  in- 
duces Enkidu  to  come  over  to  his  side.  Enkidu,  through 
his  companionship  with  the  others  rendered  quite  human, 
supports  Gilgamesh  and  fights  against  Khumbaba  (perhaps 
an  Elamite).  After  Gilgamesh,  with  Enkidu,  has  con- 

1  Jastrow,  Hebrew  and  Babylonian  Traditions,  New  York,  1914,  pp. 
52-61.     The   Adapa    story   comes    from   a   time    when    Eridu,    now 
ninety  miles  from  the  Persian  Gulf,  must  have  been  close  to  it; 
otherwise  the  worshipper  would  not  be  on  the  Gulf,  "  fishing  for 
his  lord,"  who  is  evidently  close  at  hand.    As  the  Gulf,  owing  to 
silting  of  the  river,  recedes  ninety  feet  a  year,  Eridu,  at  this  rate, 
would  have  been  on  the  shore  of  the  Gulf  5280  years  ago.     This 
would  fix  Adapa's  exploit  as  occurring  shortly  after  3365  B.  c.,  which 
is  perhaps  the  time  of  the  story. 

2  Nimrod  also  is  a  hunter  (said)  ;  he  stands  for  Babylonian  cul- 
ture.    Compare  Genesis  x.   10-11;  "  Nimrod's  kingdom  was  Babel, 
Erech,  Accad,  and  Calnah,  in  the  land  of  Shinar.     Out  of  that  land 
he  went  forth  into  Assyria  and  built  Nineveh."    The  name  Samson 
(Shimshon)    is  one  with  that  of   Gilgamesh's  divine  patron,   Sha- 
mash, the  sun-god.     Samson's  long  hair  may  be  a  solar  attribute, 
but  his  adventures  with  lions,  his  love-affairs,  and  other  traits  link 
him  rather  with  Gilgamesh  and  Enkidu.     Hercules   (though  this  is 
doubtful)  appears  to  be  a  Greek  form  of  this  myth,  which  has  de- 
scended upon  the  fabulous  Alexander,  seeking  in  India  the  fountain 
of  life.     Professor  Jastrow   has  recently  shown  that  Enkidu  is   a 
double  of  Gilgamesh. 


354  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

quered  this  foe,  Ishtar  desires  him  to  be  her  lover;  but 
he  replies  that  the  sad  fate  of  her  lovers  is  too  well  known : 
"  Tammuz  thou  causest  to  weep  every  year ;  thou  didst 
love  a  bird  and  crush  it;  the  lion  thou  loved'st  thou  didst 
bury  again  and  again"  (etc.).  Ishtar  complains  to  her  fa- 
ther Anu,  who  creates  a  strong  bull  to  destroy  Gilgamesh. 
While  Enkidu  holds  it,  Gilgamesh  slays  it.  Ishtar  then 
curses  Gilgamesh ;  but  Enkidu  throws  the  slain  bull  in  her 
face  and  threatens  to  slay  her  likewise.  Ishtar  mourns  a 
day  for  the  bull,  assembling  all  the  sacred  prostitutes,  her 
priestesses,  of  Erech.  But  now  disease  assails  Enkidu,  who 
dies  and  is  lost  to  Gilgamesh.  When  the  latter  also  begins 
to  pine  away  (decline  of  sun-power  after  the  solstice?),  he 
fears  for  himself  the  fate  of  his  lost  friend  and  thinks 
of  Utnapishtim,  who  alone  of  men  has  escaped  the  fate  of 
death  and  may  give  him  good  advice.  He  tries  to  find  this 
immortal  man,  meeting  lions  on  the  way,  but  conquering 
them  with  the  help  of  Sin,  and  comes  at  last  to  Mashu,  the 
mountain  that  reaches  to  the  lower  world  guarded  by  scor- 
pion-men. These  he  passes  and  comes  thence  to  the  sea 
crossed  only  by  Shamash.  It  is  an  ocean  on  the  way  to 
the  underworld  and  is  guarded  by  the  maiden  Sabitu,  who 
tells  him  that  all  men  must  die,  and  advises  him  to  return 
and  eat  and  drink  and  love,  while  he  may.  This  clearly 
indicates  that  after  death  no  joy  remains.  With  the  help 
of  the  sailor  of  Utnapishtim,  however,  Gilgamesh  crosses 
these  "  waters  of  death "  and,  finally  finding  the  "  long 
lived  "  one,  first  inquires  how,  if  to  escape  death  is  impos- 
sible, Utnapishtim,  who  is  also  human,  is  still  alive.1  Ut- 
napishtim explains  that  he  escaped  at  the  time  of  the  deluge 
and  gives  the  tale  thereof.  But  his  wife  pities  Gilgamesh 
and  prepares  a  root  with  the  condiment  shiba  (old  age) 
which  she  gives  him  to  eat,  after  which  he  has  to  bathe  in 
the  fountain  of  life  and  also  to  eat  of  another  plant.  But 
as  he  reaches  down  for  this  latter  plant,  which  will  finally 

1  Utnapishtim  in  one  version  is  alive,  but  weak  and  weary,  not 
altogether  like  a  god. 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  355 

make  him  immortal,  a  serpent  (demon)  snatches  it  away. 
So  Gilgamesh  has  to  return;  but  first  he  gets  permission 
from  Nergal,  king  of  Aralu  (the  lower  world),  to  question 
the  deceased  Enkidu  in  regard  to  the  condition  of  the  dead. 
The  daemonium  or  spirit  of  Enkidu  then  rises  up  like  a 
wind,  as  the  spirit  of  Samuel  rises  before  Saul  (i  Sam. 
xxviii.  7-9),  and  Gilgamesh  questions  him. 

The  story  of  the  flood  as  told  by  Utnapishtim  is  as  fol- 
lows: A  flood  was  sent  upon  the  city  of  Shuruppak  after 
Ea  had  warned  it  and  at  the  same  time  had  told  Utnapishtim 
in  a  dream  to  build  a  ship  and  save  his  family.  Enlil 
(Bel)  had  cast  out  Ea  and  so  Utnapishtim  was  safe  on 
Ea's  waters  but  not  on  Bel's  earth.  The  lord  of  the  whirl- 
wind, Ramman,  brought  on  the  deluge-storm,  cyclone,  which 
lasted  seven  days  (another  account  says  six),  frightening 
men  and  gods ;  as  it  is  said :  "  Brother  does  not  look  after 
brother,  Men  care  not  for  another.  In  the  heavens,  even 
the  gods  are  terrified  at  the  storm.  They  take  refuge  in  the 
height  of  Anu.  Like  dogs  the  gods  cowered  at  the  edge 
of  the  heavens." 

The  storm  is  further  described:  Ishtar  is  frightened 
and  reproaches  herself  that  she  assented  to  this  destruction : 
"  I  created  and  I  have  destroyed  my  own  creatures."  Ac- 
cording to  these  words,  the  storm  is  not  regarded  as  a  pun- 
ishment. Enlil  is  represented  as  opposed  to  the  saving  of 
man.  All  the  gods  sat  down  and  wept ;  for  men  had  been 
turned  to  clay  and  there  was  naught  but  water.  After 
seven  days,  however,  the  flood  ceased,  and  shortly  after 
this  an  island  appeared  and  the  ship  approached  the  moun- 
tain Nisir,  meaning  "  salvation,"  where  it  remained  for 
seven  days.  Then  Utnapishtim  tells  how  he  sought  to  know 
whether  the  waters  had  gone  down  elsewhere :  "  When 
the  seventh  day  approached  I  sent  forth  a  dove.  The  dove 
flew  about,  but  finding  no  resting-place,  returned.  Then  I 
sent  forth  a  swallow.  The  swallow  flew  about,  but  finding 
no  resting-place,  returned.  Then  I  sent  forth  a  raven.  The 
raven  flew  off,  and  seeing  that  the  waters  had  decreased,  did 


356  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

not  return."  Utnapishtim  then  gets  out  and  on  the  top  of 
the  mountain  sacrifices  to  the  gods,  who  "  smelled  the  sweet 
flavour  and  collected  like  flies,"  but  Enlil  is  excluded,  since 
without  consultation  he  caused  the  flood  (says  Ishtar)  "  and 
handed  over  my  creation  to  destruction."  Enlil  approaches, 
sees  the  ship,  and  angry  that  any  one  is  saved,  wishes  to 
know  who  is  responsible.  Ninib  tells  him  that  Ea  must 
have  saved  Utnapishtim,  for  Ea  alone  is  wise  enough 
("knows  all  arts").  Then  Ea  speaks:  "Thou  shouldst 
punish  the  sinner,  but  be  merciful  and  not  destroy  all," 
and  of  himself  he  says :  "  I  did  not  reveal  the  decision 
of  the  great  gods  (to  cause  a  flood),  but  I  sent  a  warning 
dream  to  Atra-Khasis,  which  told  him  thereof."  Atra- 
Khasis,  the  "  very  wise  one,"  is  Utnapishtim,  the  name 
which,  in  inverted  form  khasisatra  was  converted  into 
Xisuthros,  or  Sisouhros,  the  hero  of  the  flood  in  the  clas- 
sical writers  who  followed  Berosus.1  Ea  means  that  he 
merely  told  the  hero  to  build  a  ship.  So  Enlil  became 
reconciled  and  blessed  Utnapishtim  and  said:  "Hitherto 
he  was  human ;  but  now  he  and  his  wife  shall  be  as  gods ; 
he  shall  dwell  in  the  distance  at  the  confluence  of  streams," 
that  is  at  the  confluence  of  the  four  rivers  of  the  garden  of 
Paradise,  Euphrates,  Tigris,  Karun,  and  Kercha.  The  ac- 
count ends  with  the  assurance  that  there  will  not  be  another 
such  flood.  The  structure  of  the  ark  points  to  its  being  a 
vessel  of  the  Euphrates.  The1  different  versions  in  the 
Bible,  one  making  the  flood  last  one  hundred  and  fifty  and 
the  other  forty  days  (in  the  former  Noah  does  not  leave  the 
ark  for  a  year),  show  a  combination  of  two  stories. 

This  is  the  tale  told  Gilgamesh  by  Utnapishtim.  It  oc- 
curs in  different  versions,  the  details  of  which  have  been 
explained  by  Professor  Jastrow.2  Of  late  there  has  been 

1  Atrakhasis  is  also  the  name  of  the  hero  in  an  Akkadian  tablet 
of  c.    1800  B.  c.    The  tale   above   locates   the   flood   at    Shuruppak 
(about  half  way  between  Nippur  and  Larsa).     In  Berosus,  it  oc- 
curs at  Sippar.     Berosus,  the  historiographer  of  Chaldea,  lived  at 
the  end  of  the  fourth  century  B.  c. 

2  It  is  impossible  here  to  give  these  details ;  they  will  be  found 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  357 

an  attempt  made  to  combine  the  deluge-story  with  that  of 
the  first  man  and  Paradise,  under  the  caption  of  a  Su- 
merian  epic,  but  the  interpretation  appears  to  be  too  doubt- 
ful to  be  relied  upon.1 

The  request  made  by  Gilgamesh,  that  Enkidu  reveal  the 
mysteries  of  life  hereafter,  is  only  partly  granted.  A  satis- 
factory description  is  withheld  on  the  ground  that  it  is  too 
sad  to  tell;  a  mere  glimpse  of  the  gloomy  underworld  is 
allowed,  when  Enkidu  tells  Gilgamesh  that  Ereshkigal 
(Allatu)  and  Etana  live  there.  Ereshkigal  is  the  goddess 
of  the  subterranean  cavern,  from  whom  come  diseases  and 
evil.  Those  who  die  unburied  have  no  rest  but  must  roam 
about  on  earth  eating  offal;  only  brave  warriors  who  are 
buried  and  have  attention  after  death  are  moderately  happy 
hereafter.  At  least  they  "  lie  on  couches  and  drink  pure 
water,"  and  are  at  rest.  Yet  other  accounts  reveal  that  the 
underworld  was  a  realm  of  decay  and  horror,  a  prison  de- 
scribed as  a  "  house  from  which  no  one  comes  forth  who 
has  entered  it."  The  inhabitants  feed  on  dust  and  live  in 
darkness,  being  "  clothed  like  birds  in  feathers."  Such  is 
the  description  in  the  account  of  Ishtar's  descent  to  the 
underworld  (the  death  of  vegetation),  when  she  searches 
for  her  beloved  Tammuz.  In  this  gloomy  place  rules  Eresh- 
kigal, sometimes  associated  with  Irkallu  or  Urugal,  a  per- 

in  Barton's  Archaeology  and  the  Bible,  Philadelphia,  1917,  p.  277f., 
and  in  Jastrow's  Hebrew  and  Babylonian  Traditions,  New  York, 
1914,  p.  321  f.  In  the  view  of  Professor  Jastrow,  "the  deluge  myth 
rests  on  the  annual  decay  and  death  of  nature,"  perhaps  magnified  by 
the  recollection  of  a  particularly  stormy  season.  Of  the  two  Biblical 
versions,  the  Yahwist  story  stands  nearer  to  the  Babylonian  legend 
than  does  that  of  the  Priestly  Code.  The  Hebrew  tale  introduces 
an  ethical  element  not  found  in  the  Babylonian  story.  It  differs 
from  the  latter  also  in  making  the  deluge  a  prelude  to  the  promise 
that  the  world,  owing  to  the  righteousness  of  Noah,  shall  not  again 
be  destroyed. 

1  This  is  based  upon  a  cuneiform  text  found  at  Nippur.  As  first 
interpreted,  by  Dr.  Langdon,  the  flood  comes  before  the  fall  of 
man  and  the  hero,  named  Tagtug,  subsequently  eats  of  the  for- 
bidden food,  cassia,  and  so  forfeits  immortal  life.  But  Tagtug  is 
no  Noah,  there  is  no  flood,  and  cassia  is  not  a  forbidden  fruit. 


358  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Bonification  of  the  "  wide  place "  itself.  Sometimes,  this 
Hades  is  a  palace,  with  Ereshkigal  and  her  husband  Ner- 
gal 1  ruling  there,  but,  however  ruled,  it  is  a  place  of  mis- 
ery, hard  to  get  into  and  harder  to  get  out  of.  Evidently 
the  Babylonians,  like  the  Hebrews,  believed  that  the  dead 
live  not  much  changed  from  the  form  in  life,  for  in  the 
Gilgamesh  legend  Enkidu  is  recognized  at  once;  but  the 
formal  descriptions  in  the  later  descent  of  Ishtar  are  not 
in  accordance  with  this  older  view.  So,  too,  in  Isaiah  xiv. 
Qf.  and  Ezekiel,  xxxii.  i8f.,  virtually  the  Babylonian  Aralu 
is  described  and  the  dead  kings  and  warriors  appear  crowned 
and  girded  as  in  life.  Brave  warriors  seem  to  live  with 
more  life-spirit  hereafter,  as  they  show  more  spirit  when 
on  earth  —  a  notion  often  found  among  savages.  But  the 
common  dead  are  weak  and  do  nothing ;  they  talk  but  feebly 
and  are  unable  to  provide  themselves  with  food.  Those  also 
who  are  neglected  during  their  last  moments  live  hereafter 
as  they  die  here,  sorrowful  and  neglected.  When  Ishtar 
descends,  she  finds  the  lower  world  encompassed  by  seven 
walls  and  storms  her  way  through  them;  but  even  she 
has  to  submit  to  the  removal  of  her  crown,  ear-rings,  neck- 
lace, clothes,  etc.,  till  she  stands  at  last  naked  before  Eresh- 
kigal, who  afflicts  her  with  disease,  while  all  fertility  on 
earth  ceases.  Ishtar  returns  by  order  of  Ea,  after  being 
sprinkled  with  the  water  of  life.  Certain  gods  called  "  re- 
storers to  life  "  are  recognized,  apparently  gods  of  solar 
origin  who  restore  vegetation  or  perhaps  raise  from  the 
dead.  In  any  case  the  examples  are  few  and  for  ordinary 
people  there  is  no  heaven  or  joy  hereafter.  Utnapishtim 
and  his  wife  are  translated,  as  a  few  Hebraic  heroes  are 
carried  to  heaven,  but  this  pair  do  not  go  to  heaven.  They 
are  carried  to  a  sort  of  resting-place  in  earth.  There  is  no 
paradise  hereafter;  when  one  dies  one  has  no  further  con- 
cern even  with  the  gods,  who  are  the  gods  of  the  living. 

1  The  god  of  Cuthah ;  hence  "  Cuthah "  occurs  also  as  a  designa- 
tion of  the  underworld,  being  the  home  of  Nergal  (sun-),  god  of 
death. 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  359 

Neither  Babylonians  nor  Hebrews  practised  ancestor- 
worship.  In  Babylonia  a  few  kings  are  deified  and  wor- 
shipped with  sacrifice.  But  there  is  no  general  cult  of  the 
dead.  Likewise  among  the  Hebrews  we  find  Enoch  1  and 
Elijah  (perhaps  Moses)  translated  to  heaven,  and  vestiges 
of  a  practice  of  offering  viands  to  ghosts ;  but  the  belief 
that  the  dead  live  hereafter  and  the  practice  of  providing 
them  with  food,  or  even  that  of  putting  implements  and 
toys  into  graves,  are  not  indicative  of  ancestor- worship. 
As  already  explained  (above,  p.  277),  the  worship  of  dead 
kings  does  not  imply  a  general  worship  of  ancestors. 

Sheol,  where  none  praises  God  (Ps.  vi.  63),  may  be  one 
with  Babylonian  shu'alu,  "  grave  " ;  it  is  described  in  Job 
as  a  place  so  gloomy  that  even  its  light  is  dark  (Job  x.  22), 
and  the  early  belief  of  the  Babylonians  that  the  dead  are  all 
ekimmu  demoniac  shades,  alive  but  weak  shadows  of  hu- 
man beings,2  is  reflected  in  Hebrew  belief  of  the  earlier 
period.  Later,  however,  the  Hebrew  view  changed  and 
in  the  second  century  B.  c.,  life  hereafter  was  deemed  a  dou- 
ble condition,  for  "animals  live  below  and  men  live  on 
high,"  or  in  other  words  only  the  spirits  of  men,  in  dis- 
tinction from  those  of  animals  "go  upward  ";  but  the  very 
passage  that  suggests  this  view  questions  it  (Ecclesiastes 
iii.  21 ).  The  sixteenth  and  forty-ninth  Psalms  are  more 
hopeful.  Again,  in  Babylonian  mythology  there  was  no 
ethical  factor,  no  suggestion  that  a  man  was  punished  or 
rewarded  hereafter  for  acts  done  in  this  life,  as  in  the  later 
Hebraic  belief. 

The  Gilgamesh  epic  is  a  congeries  of  unrelated  legends 
concerning  the  chief  hero  and  others  more  or  less  closely 

1  On  Enoch  as  Etana,  see  Barton,  op.  cit.,  p.  266. 

2  Shades  are  weak  even  when   fed,  but  indignation  makes  them 
angry,  and  if  neglected  and  unburied  the  ghosts  may  become  evil 
demons  on  earth  instead  of  resting  underground.     Fear  of  the  dead 
is  implied  by  covering  oneself   in  mourning  and  cuttings   of   hair 
may  be  made  to  give  the  shades  power  (which  resides  in  the  hair). 
Necromancy,  oracles  from  the  dead,  implies  a  belief  that  souls  could 
be  made  to  answer,  perhaps  even  dragged  up  from  below,  but  not 
permanently. 


360  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

connected  with  him.  Enkidu,  for  example,  has  no  essential 
office  in  this  story  and  probably  is  taken  from  another  tale 
depicting  how  some  first  man,  still  savage  and  living  with 
animals,  is  won  from  animalism  by  the  love  of  a  woman. 
It  is  too  much  to  say  that  he  represents  Adam  or  that  the 
woman  who  tempts  him  is  a  form  of  Eve,  but  there  are 
points  of  similarity.  Another  figure  of  some  interest  is 
that  of  Etana,  mentioned  above  as  being  in  the  under- 
world. He  may  be  Enoch  as  well  as  Ethan  (both  words 
mean  "strong").  His  son's  birth  is  attended  by  marvels. 
An  eagle  helps  the  child  to  be  delivered  and  this  eagle  then 
tempts  Etana  to  mount  on  his  back  into  the  sky,  whereby 
the  appearance  of  earth  and  sea  below,  as  they  ascend,  is 
described.  After  they  pass  the  gate  of  heaven  (Anu), 
where  they  take  a  rest,  they  continue  on  their  upward  flight 
until  the  earth  looks  small  as  a  garden  bed,  when  suddenly 
they  come  crashing  down  and  the  next  we  hear  of  Etana 
he  is  in  the  underworld.  The  eagle  is  punished  by  the 
sun-god  Shamash,  who  tells  a  serpent  to  creep  into  the  car- 
cass of  a  dead  ox  and  destroy  the  eagle,  when  the  bird 
comes  to  eat  it.  In  i  Kings  iv.  31,  Ethan  the  Ezrahite  is 
cited  as  a  type  of  superior  wisdom. 

Astrology  has  changed  Ishtar  into  the  planet  Venus  and 
as  such  her  part  in  the  Tammuz  legend  has  been  altered 
and  it  is  as  the  planet  that  she  is  rescued  from  the  under- 
world rather  than  as  the  mother-goddess.  At  an  early 
period  the  greater  gods  were  thus  identified  with  planets,1 
Marduk  as  Jupiter,  Ninib  as  Saturn,  Nergal  as  Mars,  Nebo 
as  Mercury.  Astrology  was  especially  favoured  by  the 
Assyrians  and  by  the  Chaldeans.  The  sun  in  an  agricul- 
tural community  naturally  remained  the  chief  god,  Ninib 
in  Nippur,  Marduk  of  Eridu  and  Babylon,  originally  Anu 
of  Erech.  He  is  sometimes  kind,  sometimes  destructive,  but 
always  the  just  and  righteous  god.  Shamash  punishes 


lesser  gods  were  identified  with  fixed  stars.  On  the  astral 
side  of  the  religion  and  its  exaggeration  by  Winckler  and  others, 
see  King,  History  of  Babylon,  London,  1915,  p.  292. 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  361 

crimes,  pronounces  judgment  through  the  priestly  judges, 
etc.  The  moon-cult  was  more  restricted,  being  associated 
chiefly  with  Ur  in  the  South,  a  Sumerian  settlement,  and 
Haran  in  the  North.  The  Moon  is  "  lord  of  knowledge," 
or  "  luminary " ;  *  his  horns  appear  in  the  headdress  of 
Naram-Sin.  He  sails  through  heaven  on  a  boat  represented 
by  the  crescent.  It  is  when  Ishtar  becomes  Venus  that  she 
is  made  the  daughter  of  the  moon. 

To  find  out  the  will  of  the  Babylonian  gods,  recourse 
was  had  to  dreams  and  omens  by  a  science  of  divination 
which  was  Babylonian  (rather  than  Sumerian).  One  form 
of  divination  was  based  on  the  movements  of  the  heavenly 
bodies.  One  was  based  on  the  interpretation  of  the  liver 
of  sacrificed  animals,  as  the  soul,  which  showed  the  soul 
or  sense  of  the  god.  This  latter  idea  rests  on  the  early 
belief  that  the  seat  of  emotion  is  the  liver,  as  even  in  our  day 
to  be  "  white-livered "  means  to  be  cowardly.  Another 
method  of  divining  was  to  shoot  arrows  or  throw  them  down 
before  an  image  of  a  god  and  get  a  response  through  the 
position  they  assumed.  Sometimes  they  were  previously 
marked.  This  was  practised  by  the  Arabs  and  may  have 
been  the  origin  of  the  incident  (i  Sam.  xx.  2gi.)  described 
as  shooting  arrows  beside  the  stone  Ezel,  the  fall  of  which 
indicated  whether  one  should  stay  or  go  farther  on.  Im- 
ages or  symbols  of  the  divinity,  such  as  were  perhaps  the 
Teraphim,  were  also  consulted.2 

Another  point  in  which  Babylonian  culture  touches  that 
of  the  Hebrews  is  that  of  a  taboo  day.  The  Babylonian 

1  The  moon  was  worshipped  under  this  name  at  Ur,  as  Shamash 
was  at  Sippar.    At  Haran  the  moon  is  called  Sin.     Sin,  Shamash, 
and  Ishtar  make  an  old  triad  of  Babylon. 

2  In  his  Aspects  of  Religious  Belief  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria, 
New  York,  1911,  p.  145,  Professor  Jastrow  shows  that  Babylonian 
hepatoscopy,  examination  of  the  liver,  on  the  part  of  official  in- 
spectors or  seers,  baru,  was  carried  to  the  Hittites  and  Etruscans. 
Other  forms  of  divination  employ  oil  and  water,  the  bubbles  mark- 
ing events,  and  the  careful  record  of  unnatural  phenomena,  celes- 
tial and  terrestrial,  such  as  unnatural  births  as  well  as  storms  and 
earthquakes,  exactly  as  in  China  (above,  p.  270). 


362  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

shabatum  designated  the  full-moon's  day,  when  the  gods 
must  be  pacified,  to  interpret  most  naturally  the  equation 
of  pacification  and  shabatum.  In  Hebrew  the  equivalent 
word  designated  a  day  of  rest  and  refreshment,  which  grad- 
ually Assumed  a  holy  character.  In  a  sense  it  was  a  holy 
(that  is  taboo)  day  to  the  Babylonians,  as  the  pacification 
of  the  heart  of  the  gods  was  essential  at  the  (evil)  critical 
"  full-moon  "  period,  to  guard  against  ill-luck,  incident  on 
the  declination  of  lunar  power.  It  is  a  good  example  of 
the  way  the  accursed  and  the  holy  unite. 

The  Hebrew  Sabbath  is  often  spoken  of  in  connection 
with  the  new-moon  as  a  parallel  lunar  phase.  Celebrations 
at  the  middle  of  the  month  may  revert  to  the  original  idea 
of  the  Sabbath.1  But  especially  noteworthy  is  the  fact 
that  in  Babylon,  on  the  "  evil  seventh  day,"  the  king  might 
not  use  food  cooked  over  a  fire  nor  ride  forth,  just  as 
the  Hebrew  is  forbidden  to  light  a  fire  or  go  forth  on  the 
Sabbath  (Ex.  xvi.  29;  xxxv.  3).  This  shows  that  the 
Sabbath,  too,  was  originally  an  unlucky  day.  The  multi- 
plication of  Sabbaths  is  also  not  without  a  Babylonian  paral- 
lel, as  special  sacrifices  were  held  on  the  7th,  I4th,  2ist,  28th, 
of  the  (lunar)  month  and  the  7th  and  I5th  were  very  un- 
lucky.2 Probably  the  very  natural  division  began  as  ane- 
fas  day,  which  would  give  it  a  rest-character.  Character- 
istic of  the  two  Semitic  branches  is  it  that  the  Babylonian 
regarded  it  as  evil  while  the  Hebrew  hallowed  it.  But  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  Hebrew  made  little  of 
Sabbaths  till  after  the  Exile.  Even  as  late  as  800  B.  c.  the 
Hebrew  Sabbath  was  not  what  it  became  later,  for  exam- 
ple in  Is.  Iviii.  I3f. 

1  Purim  is  thus  celebrated  in  the  middle  of  the  month,  though  this 
is  a  Persian  spring  festival  adopted  by  the  Jews,  in  which  Mordecai 
and  Esther  represent  an  original  Marduk  and  Ishtar,  perhaps  an- 
other "king-killing"  reminiscence. 

2  This  division  of  the  month  by  moon-phases  with  sacred  days  at 
the  moon's  halves  and  quarters  is  also  Hindu;  every  "knot"  day 
being  a  taboo  day,  though  usually  only  the  new  and  full  moon  days 
were  observed  as  holy-days.    Compare  2  Kg.  iv.  23  for  the  grouping 
of  the  two  days. 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  363 

The  most  noteworthy  Babylonian  festivals  were  those 
of  the  New  Year,  Zagmug,  and  the  Tammuz  festivals,  when 
Ishtar  was  wedded  to  her  Lord  at  the  vernal  equinox  and 
mourned  over  him  at  his  death.  There  was  a  Marduk  fes- 
tival, when  a  procession  went  across  from  Babylon  to  Bor- 
sippa,  amid  general  rejoicing.1  But  penitential  psalms  also 
accompanied  this  spring  celebration  (of  ten  days).  As  the 
Jewish  Day  of  Atonement  marks  the  opening  of  the  year, 
when  one's  fate  is  inscribed  for  the  year,  so  at  the  Baby- 
lonian New  Year.  The  tone  of  the  psalms  is  at  its  best  in 
such  an  extract  as  this :  "  The  sin  that  I  sinned  I  know 
not;  my  god  has  visited  me  in  anger.  I  sought  help  but 
none  took  my  hand;  I  wept  but  none  stood  by  my  side.  I 
cried  aloud  and  there  was  none  that  heard.  To  my  god, 
the  merciful  god,  to  the  god  I  know  not,  I  turn  and  pray. 
How  long,  O  Lord!  O  Lord,  cast  not  thy  servant  away; 
but  turn  my  sin  into  a  blessing;  and  may  the  wind  carry 
away  my  transgressions;  seven  times  seven  are  they;  for- 
give thou  them !  " 

The  Babylonian  hymns  or  psalms  are  for  the  most  part 
more  magical  than  religious;  yet  even  as  incantations  or 
purificatory  formulae  they  are  not  without  an  ethical  ele- 
ment. Purificatory  rites  are  apt  to  pass  from  physical  to 
spiritual;  taboo  may  be  said  to  be  the  beginning  of  the 
ethos,  but  even  taboo  connotes  a  spiritual  defilement  and 
purification.  So  the  Babylonian  sounds  a  note  leading  to 
the  expression  of  inner  purification  when  he  says :  "  I 
have  washed  my  hands  with  pure  water  .  .  .  (washed  off) 
all  that  is  evil  in  my  body."  There  are  also,  as  Professor 
Langdon  has  pointed  out,  certain  congregational  hymns  of 
lamentation,  which  may  be  older  than  the  private  psalm, 
and  which  we  may  perhaps  regard  as  models  for  Jewish 
lamentations  learned  on  the  spot.  They  appear  to  be  very 

1  This  was  originally  a  solar  festival,  like  that  of  Shamash  at 
Sippar,  in  which  the  king  represents  the  god.  Nergal  had  a  winter 
solstice  ceremony  of  mourning.  The  Babylonian  festivals  were  thus 
partly  lunar  and  partly  solar  or  agricultural. 


364  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

old.  In  Assyria  the  ethical  element  is  clearly  connected 
with  divinity,  more  especially  with  Shamash,  as  the  Sun 
who  is  "  judge  "  and  whose  daughters  are  Justice  and  Right. 
It  is  before  this  judge  that  the  Babylonian  king  Hammurabi 
stands,  and  Shamash  grows  ever  more  a  supporter  of 
morality,  as  he  is  the  all-seeing  god  of  divination. 

Closer  connection  with  the  West  is  found  in  the  hymns 
of  lament  over  Tammuz  (Sumerian  Dumu-zi),  the  early 
dying  vegetation  mourned  by  the  mother  of  all  life,  or,  as 
some  interpret  him,  the  spring  sun,  who  is  wept  by  the 
women  (Ezekiel  viii.  14).  This  is  the  Adonis  pictured  by 
Theocritus ;  in  Babylon  his  sister  was  the  "  lady-of-the- 
field,"  and  she  and  his  mother  (sometimes  one)  weep  for 
him  when  the  summer  solstice  brings  an  end  to  his  life  and 
he  "  goes  to  earth's  bosom,"  where  Ishtar  later  seeks  him. 
His  classical  name  is  usually  derived  from  Adon,  "  lord," 
though  he  is  not  a  very  lordly  figure  and  is  more  the  deliciae 
than  the  master  of  Ishtar  or  Venus.  Hence  it  has  been 
suggested  that  his  name  means  "  joy "  (connected  with 
fjBovi)).  In  Babylon,  Tammuz  is  sometimes  a  goddess.1 

The  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  form  of  religion,  as  has 
been  said,  is  intensely  practical,  but  with  a  slight  tendency 
to  ethical  monotheism.  This  among  the  Hebrews  resulted 
in  real  monotheism,  which  was  revived  again  by  the  Mo- 
hammedans. The  developed  cult  of  these  great  sister  na- 
tions of  Mesopotamia  cannot,  however,  give  us  the  prim- 
itive Semitic  form,  already  buried  by  syncretism  and  the 
mingling  of  two  kinds  of  culture.  In  Arabia,  we  find  a 
Semitic  tribal  society,  not  of  a  state  but  of  a  small  com- 
munity, and,  since  religion  reflects  social  conditions,  a 
tribal  or  clan  religion.  Every  individual  in  the  clan  must 
worship  the  deity.  There  is  no  religious  liberality  in  a 
small  primitive  community.  Before  Babylon  also  the  rule 

1  Compare  Kretschmer,  Glotta,  1915,  vii,  p.  2of.  The  original 
story  may  have  been  Sumerian.  Elsewhere  the  god  is  lamented  by 
a  husband-brother  (so  in  the  Osiris-Isis  myth),  while  Tammuz  is 
bewailed  by  a  sister-mother. 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  3^5 

was  that  every  city  had  its  god.  But  Babylon  had  many 
gods  from  many  tribes  and  towns.  In  a  small  tribe  the 
state  and  religion  are  one;  the  god  himself  is  a  member  of 
the  tribe.  As  such  he  is  the  head  or  lord  of  the  town, 
as  it  represents  a  tribe,  and  often  has  no  other  name  than 
master,  lord,  or  king,  Baal,  Melech,  El  ("mighty  one"). 
In  Arabia,  the  primitive  matriarchal  or  mother-headship 
form  of  government  was  still  reflected  in  the  female  char- 
acter of  the  divinities,  many  tribes  worshipping  an  Allat 
(lady)  instead  of  a  lord.1  But  there  were  also  in  each  re- 
ligion countless  spirits  revered  or  feared  as  local  powers, 
corresponding  to  the  Jinns  of  today,  while  stones  and  trees 
were  looked  upon  as  in  themselves  divine  and  worshipped 
by  the  tribe.  Here  a  striking  contrast  presents  itself  with 
the  Aryans,  whose  earliest  religion  is  a  family  religion  not 
a  tribal  one.  It  follows  that  not  the  hearth,  as  among  the 
Aryans,  but  the  land  is  the  centre  of  holiness.  Hence  too, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  worship  of  ancestors  plays  no  part 
in  Semitic  religions,  whereas  it  is  a  prominent  factor  in 
Aryan  religion.  The  nucleus  round  which  the  whole  is 
rolled  is  different.  Without  the  family  cult  there  is  no 
worship  of  ancestors,  no  raising  of  ancestors  to  become 
great  gods ;  but  the  land  is  the  centre,  the  spirit  of  the  place 
(the  local  nature- spirit)  is  the  spirit  of  the  clan.  All  are 
related  not  only  to  him  but  through  him  to  each  other. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  clan-ancestor  remains  a  hero,  but  is 
not  a  worshipped  god.2  Hence,  the  mighty  tribal  bond  of 
clan-kinship;  hence,  too,  the  ethical  teaching  that  blood- 
brotherhood  was  a  sacred  tie 3  and  that  tribal  hospitality 
was  a  sacred  duty;  hence  too,  most  important  from  the 

1  So    (obscured)    in   Babylonian   mythology,   the   goddess    Aruru 
and  the  goddess  Ereshkigal  were  respectively  the  prior  creators  and 
rulers  of  the  great  underworld. 

2  So   in    Babylon  there   is   no    family  ancestor-worship  but  king 
Gilgamesh  becomes   a  national  hero.    This   might  have   developed 
into  general  "  ancestor-worship  "  but  it  did  not  do  so.     Only  kings 
received  divine  honours  (see  above). 

3  In  mourning  this  blood-covenant  is  implied  by  cutting  oneself. 


366  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

religious  point  of  view,  the  doctrine,  not  formally  taught 
but  inevitably  assumed,  that  the  sacrificial  meal  was  not, 
as  later,  an  offering  of  thanks  to  a  god  but  a  communion 
of  the  clan  with  the  god  of  the  clan.  In  Babylon  the  food 
of  the  gods  is  thus  eaten  by  the  people.  Most  of  the 
Arabian  tribes  locate  their  god  in  a  stone  or  tree-trunk, 
and  the  stone  becomes  the  altar  because  it  was  at  first 
divine,  as  the  god.  The  Ashera  or  sacred  groves  of  Scrip- 
ture embody  the  belief  in  a  goddess  of  vegetation  parallel 
to  the  figure  of  Ishtar.  As  with  her  cult,  so  with  that  of 
the  Ashera,  which  was  apt  to  be  a  drastic  and  literal  aid 
to  the  spirit  of  fertility.  It  was  not  necessarily  a  female 
figure  that  was  thus  revered.1  The  masculine  Athtar  is 
found  in  South  Arabia,  where  the  female  principle  has 
become  male;  but  in  general  the  greatest  divinity  of  the 
Western  Semites  was  the  Magna  Mater,  as  she  was  known 
in  Rome,  who  became  for  a  time  a  world-divinity  sacred 
from  the  Euphrates  to  the  Guadelquiver.  In  Canaan  the 
worship  was  like  that  in  the  towns  ruled  by  Ishtar  in  the 
Gilgamesh  story.  The  goddess  of  fertility  is  served  by 
women  slaves  of  the  temple,  whose  ministrations  appear  as 
a  debauch  of  sensuality.  In  small  places  there  was  prob- 
ably only  the  annual  celebration  of  the  spring-festival,  but 
the  towns  intensified  the  religious  evil  and  it  became  a 
scandal  to  the  decent  Westerners,  whose  own  cult  of  sim- 
ilar powers  was  more  veiled,  that  the  gods  of  the  East 
were  mere  profligates  2  and,  their  service  mere  occasion  for 
gross  excess. 

Unmistakable  affinity  with  Hebraic  legends  is  shown  by 
those  of  Babylon,  with  which  Palestine  stood  in  some  sort 

1  Neither  in  the  Ashera  nor  in  the  Ishtar  cult  is  there  any  trace 
of  ethical  dualism.    The  only  dualism  in  Babylonia  is  the  natural 
opposition  of   sun  and  storm.     Sun  and  vegetation  cannot  be  re- 
garded as  more  than  sex-dualism  in  nature. 

2  The    sacred    prostitutes,   however,    were    not    the    only   women 
servitors  of  the  gods.     Some,  like  the  entu,  magicians  and  diviners, 
were  apparently  chaste  priestesses.     Nabonidus  appointed  his  daugh- 
ter as  chief  of  such  a  company  of  diviners. 


BABYLONIAN  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  367 

of  connexion  at  an  early  period.  A  Jacob  lived  in  Bab- 
ylon c.  1900  B.  c.  and  a  Jacob-town  was  known  in  Palestine 
c.  1600  B.  c.  Abraham  also  is  a  West  Semitic  (Aramaic) 
name  known  in  Babylon  at  about  the  time  of  Hammurabi. 
But  all  this  does  not  prove  that  Palestine  was  colonized 
from  Babylon.  It  merely  indicates  that  a  Western  Semite 
named  Jacob  and  one  named  Abraham  were  with  the  large 
number  of  Amorites  who  took  their  way  to  Babylonia  at 
the  time  of  Hammurabi.  It  is  at  this  point  that  we  get  a 
reasonable  explanation  of  the  resemblances  between  East 
and  West  from  the  point  of  view  of  legends  and  stories  of 
the  past.  They  had  a  common  origin,  not  in  Arabia  sev- 
eral millennia  before  2000  B.  c.,  but  to  the  west  of  the 
Euphrates,  in  the  area  where  the  Semites  lived  before  they 
became  respectively  Babylonians  and  Palestinians.  The  He- 
brews took  with  them  two  different  versions  of  the  Crea- 
tion story  and  perhaps  two  of  the  Deluge ;  the  other  Semites 
knew  still  more.  These  other  Semites  preferred  quantity; 
the  Hebrews  preferred  quality ;  and  even  what  they  had  they 
refined,  just  as  they  refined  later  the  tales  of  other  Patri- 
archs. 

On  the  ethical  side,  the  discovery  at  Susa  in  1901-1902 
of  the  code  of  Hammurabi  and  the  subsequent  discovery 
that  this  code  reverts  to  a  Sumerian  model  of  circa  2500 
B.  c.1  show  that  this  king,  who  was  paramount  ruler  c.  2000 
B.  c.  as  far  as  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  Mediterranean,  gov- 
erned a  city-population  far  more  complex  than  that  of  the 
Hebrews  of  the  Mosaic  code,  though  his  laws  retain  marks 
of  the  old  barbarities  preserved  in  the  Pentateuch  (ordeal, 
lex  talionis).  When  this  code  was  made,  it  was  intended 
for  a  commercial  population  and  probably  was  not  used 
at  all  in  the  western  dominion.  At  the  time  of  the  Exile 

1  Compare  Clay,  A  Sumerian  Prototype  of  the  Hammurabi  Code, 
Yale  Oriental  Series,  i,  p.  i8f.  The  tablet,  in  the  Yale  Collection, 
bases  the  law  upon  the  authority  of  the  goddess  Nisaba  and  the 
god  Khani,  patrons  of  writing  and  law.  Hammurabi's  code  appears 
under  the  auspices  of  the  sun-god  Shamash;  the  earlier  code,  under 
Western  divinities. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

it  was  probably  no  longer  in  use,  or  the  Jews  would  have 
improved  their  own  code  by  copying  it.  As  it  is,  although 
there  are  a  few  instances  of  correspondence  between-  the 
codes  (not  so  many  as  has  been  asserted),  the  dissimilarities 
and  divergencies  are  much  greater.  And  for  a  very  good 
reason.  The  Hammurabi  code  is  made  for  a  more  ad- 
vanced type  of  civilization.  Hebraic  law  does  not  even 
recognize  the  complex  business  life  implied  by  the  Hammu- 
rabi code.  Thus,  in  contrast  to  the  Pentateuch,  Hammu- 
rabi regulates  wages  and  prices,  liabilities  of  agents,  of 
builders,  and  of  physicians.  He  has  rules  for  adopting  sons, 
for  the  treatment  of  the  temple-women,  a  more  complicated 
law  of  inheritance,  a  more  civilized  divorce-law.  He  per- 
mits imprisonment,  instead  of  slavery,  for  debt  and  regu- 
lates usury,  while  the  Hebrews  took  another  two  thousand 
years  even  to  legalize  interest  on  loans.  Besides  this,  the 
Hammurabi  code  has  nothing  to  do  with  ritual  and  reli- 
gion, the  main  concern  of  the  Mosaic  code.  In  a  word, 
the  Hammurabi  code  is  purely  a  civil  code,  while  the  He- 
braic code  is  only  incidentally  a  civil  code,  containing  regu- 
lations for  a  much  simpler  agricultural  community.  In 
character,  therefore,  the  Mosaic  code  is  really  more  prim- 
itive than  that  of  Hammurabi.  The  few  common  factors 
might  easily  have  derived  from  a  common  stock  of  Semitic 
law,  developed  in  each  case  according  to  national  needs. 

So  much  has  been  said  or  implied  above  as  to  the  su- 
periority of  the  Hebrews  ethically  (they  deserve  the  praise), 
that  an  impression  may  have  been  given  impugning  by  con- 
trast the  Babylonians  and  Assyrians.  As  for  the  Baby- 
lonians, the  code  just  discussed  shows  a  mild  and  humane 
monarch  and  the  ethical  character  of  the  penitential  psalms 
is  high.  From  the  palace  of  Ashurbanipal  come  also  texts 
inculcating  ethics  as  a  religious  concern :  "  Thou  shalt  not 
slander;  speak  what  is  pure;  speak  no  evil;  speak  kindly. 
Shamash  will  punish  him  who  speaks  evil  and  slanders. 
Let  not  thy  mouth  boast;  when  angry,  speak  not  at  once, 


BABYLONIAN"  AND  ASSYRIAN  RELIGION  3^9 

lest  thou  repent  afterwards  that  thou  has  spoken  in  anger. 
Approach  thy  god  daily  with  an  offering  and  prayer;  and 
come, before  him  with  a  pure  heart."  Again,  in  the  same 
text,  it  is  said  that  one  should  not  oppress  the  weak  but 
should  give  food  and  wine  to  the  needy;  one  should  seek 
right  and  avoid  wrong,  "  for  this  is  pleasing  to  the  god," 
and  "  he  who  fears  the  gods  will  live  long." 

It  must  not  be  imagined,  however,  that  "  from  the  pal- 
ace of  Ashurbanipal "  necessarily  implies  Assyrian  origin 
or  great  antiquity.  Ashurbanipal  scoured  the  country  for 
interesting  texts  and  made  a  museum  of  them;  those  in 
foreign  tongues  his  many  learned  scribes  could  do  into 
Assyrian  for  him.  What  we  actually  know  of  these  texts 
is  that  they  are  from  about  700  B.  c.  and  come  from  no  one 
knows  where.  Now  it  is  a  striking  fact  that,  although  there 
are  Babylonian  flood-stories  as  old  as  2000  B.  c.,  yet  the 
Creation  and  Deluge  legends  which  most  closely  resemble 
those  of  the  Hebrews  come  from  this  vague  source  and 
date,  so  that  for  all  we  know  to  the  contrary  the  Biblical 
stories  may  actually  have  been  composed  before  the  crea- 
tion and  flood  stories  of  the  "  Nimrod  epic,"  as  it  has  been 
called,  though  it  is  not  an  epic  and  has  no  connexion  with 
Nimrod.  Yet  it  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  Ashur- 
banipal jumble  of  legends  comes  from  Palestine.  Prob- 
ably Amorites  and  Aramaeans  lived  originally  to  the  West 
of  the  Euphrates,  later  spreading  in  two  directions  and 
each  taking  a  store  of  legend  and  a  few  simple  rules  of 
conduct  like  "  an  eye  for  an  eye."  It  was  from  this  west- 
ern land  that  Hammurabi,  himself  an  Amorite,  as  were 
largely  the  Hebrews,  derived,  and  since  in  his  "  First  Ba- 
bylonian Dynasty  "  five  kings  had  already  preceded  him,  it 
is  probable  that  the  eastward  stream  of  Western  Semites 
had  begun  their  course  as  early  as  the  middle  of  the  third 
millennium  B.  c.,  or  even  earlier. 


37°  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

L.  W.  King,  A  History  of  Babylon,  London,  1915, 

Morris  Jastrow,  Jr.,  Die  Religion  Babyloniens  und  Assyriens, 
Giessen,  Leipzig,  1905-12;  Hebrew  and  Babylonian  Tra- 
dition, New  York,  1914;  Aspects  of  Religious  Belief  and 
Practice  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  New  York,  1911;  Civ- 
ilization of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  Philadelphia,  1915. 

R.  W.  Rogers,  The  History  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  2  vols., 
New  York,  1915. 

George  A.  Barton,  A  Sketch  of  Semitic  Origins,  New  York, 
1902;  Archaeology  and  the  Bible,  Philadelphia,  2nd  ed., 
1917. 

A.  T.  Clay,  Amurru,  The  Home  of  the  Northern  Semites,  Phil- 
adelphia, 1909. 

Lewis  R.  Farnell,  Greece  and  Babylon,  Edinburgh,  1911. 


CHAPTER  NINETEEN 

THE   RELIGION    OF   ZOROASTER   AND   ZOROASTRIANISM 

ZOROASTER  is  the  first  of  those  few  religious  teachers  who 
have  so  altered  received  religion  as  to  seem  to  be  the  find- 
ers as  well  as  the  founders  of  the  religions  afterwards 
called  by  their  name.  Yet,  like  all  the  others,  he  built  his 
religion  upon  a  foundation  which  had  existed  from  im- 
memorial antiquity  and  which  persisted  long  after  the  edi- 
fice raised  over  it  began  to  crumble. 

When  and  where  Zoroaster  was  born  is  not  known.  One 
theory,  supported  by  excellent  authority,  is  that  he  was 
born  not  far  from  Urumiah,  near  the  Caspian  Sea,  in  Me- 
dian territory,  where,  according  to  native  tradition,  his 
father,  Purushaspa,  lived,  though  his  mother,  Dughdhova, 
is  supposed  to  have  come  from  Ragha  (Rai),  near  Tabriz. 
This  district  (Teheran)  became  the  seat  of  the  later  faith 
and  it  was  generally  believed  that  Airyana  Vaeja  (Iran  Vaj ), 
that  is,  Atropatene  or  Azerbaijan,  between  Lake  Urumiah 
and  the  Caspian  Sea,  was  where  the  prophet  was  tempted 
by  the  Evil  One.  The  literary  data,  however,  point  rather 
to  Bactria  than  to  Media  as,  if  not  the  birth-place,  at  least 
the  life-place  of  the  prophet.  It  is  this  region  that  the 
geographical  statements  in  the  Vendidad  appear  to  indi- 
cate and  the  language  of  the  early  Gathas,  the  only  literary 
remains  imputable  to  Zoroaster  himself,  is  so  closely  re- 
lated to  that  of  the  Rig  Veda  as  to  seem  like  an  Indie  dia- 
lect. 

We  have  already  seen  how  close  was  the  connexion  be- 
tween the  Vedic  and  Zoroastrian  religions.  The  speakers 
of  the  two  dialects  must  have  lived  near  each  other  in 
place  and  in  time;  the  worshippers  must  have  had  a  com- 

371 


372  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

mon  creed  in  many  respects.  The  priests  of  both  religions 
bear  the  same  name;  the  chief  object  of  worship  is  the 
same  great  Spirit;  even  the  lesser  spirits  (gods)  bear  in 
part  identical  names ;  both  religions  hold  the  Soma  or  Horn 
plant  in  veneration;  and  in  lesser  details  of  the  cult  there 
is  often  a  verbal  similarity.  The  religion  of  Zoroaster,  the 
Greek  form  of  Zarathustra,  was  obviously  built  over  a 
prior  religion  closely  agreeing  with  that  of  the  Vedic  poets. 
But  the  deim  or  bright  god  of  the  Veda  is  the  daeva  or  evil 
spirits  of  the  Zoroastrian;  the  dasyu-slay'mg  Indra  of  the 
Veda  is  one  of  these  evil  spirits,  and  the  pagan  dasyu  he 
slays  in  the  Veda  is  the  good  people  or  district  of  the  Zo- 
roastrian (danhu,  a  settlement  of  the  orthodox),  as  the 
"  demon  nations "  of  the  Chinese  were  their  neighbours 
on  the  north.  We  may  imagine  then  that,  as  the  two  peo- 
ples, originally  contiguous,  drifted  apart,  the  distinction, 
still  visible  in  the  Rig  Veda,  between  the  cult  of  the  Wise 
Spirit  of  the  Holy  Order  and  the  cult  of  the  lower  nature 
gods  such  as  Indra,  was  accentuated,  especially  as  the  cult 
of  the  Holy  Order  and  the  more  spiritual  religion  became 
the  cult  opposed  to  the  nomadic  hordes,  whose  lawless  deeds 
were  themselves  a  reproach  to  the  gods  they  worshipped, 
as  it  is  said,  "Ye  (nomads)  cause  men  doing  the  worst 
things  to  be  called  *  beloved  of  the  daevas' "  (Yasna  32). 
The  mere  fact  that  the  word  for  god  became  the  word  for 
demon  is  not  significant,  since  in  India  itself  the  word  for 
evil  demon,  originally  meaning  spirit,  was  at  first  applied 
to  a  good  god  (Asura).  The  difference  between  one  side 
of  the  Vedic  religion  and  Zoroastrianism  is  only  partial. 
Vedic  hymns  to  the  chief  Asura  are  quite  Zoroastrian  in 
tone  and  show  that  the  Wise  Spirit  (Asura)  had  a  cult  in 
India  as  well  as  in  Bactria  or  Parthia,  where  Zoroastrianism 
probably  arose. 

The  date  of  Zoroaster  can  be  neither  that  assigned  to  him 
by  Greek  tradition  (c.  6000  B.C.)  nor  by  native  tradition 
and  modern  scholarship  (c.  600  B.C.).  Many  scholars  be- 
lieve that  Zoroaster  was  born  in  625  or  660  B.  c.,  that  in  any 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       373 

event  he  belongs  to  the  latter  half  of  the  seventh  century. 
Others  hold  that  he  was  born  about  1000  B.  c.  This  at  least 
accords  better  with  the  linguistic  closeness  between  Vedic 
and  Avestan  early  texts. 

The  oldest  Vedic  texts  may  date  from  c.  1200-1000  B.  c. 
When  one  thinks  of  the  linguistic  changes  likely  to  have 
taken  place  in  an  unlettered  community  in  the  course  of  a 
few  centuries,  the  date  660  for  the  Gathas  seems  quite  im- 
possible. Probably  Zoroaster  lived  centuries  before  the 
time  to  which  he  is  usually  ascribed.  The  current  theory, 
based  on  tradition  regarding  his  life,  considers  him 
a  prophet  patronized  by  a  certain  Hystaspes  (Vishtaspa, 
Gushtasp),  the  son  of  Lohrasp,  king  of  Balkh,  the  scene 
of  his  activity  being  in  Seistan.  It  is  believed  by  the  faith- 
ful that  Lake  Hamun  in  this  district,  just  west  of  Afghan- 
istan, still  preserves  his  seed.  Probably  his  sect  was  at 
first  a  small  and  insignificant  religious  body.  All  the  Per- 
sians worshipped  the  Wise  Spirit  (Ormuzd),  who  is  the 
chief  figure  in  Zoroastrianism ;  but  this  does  not  imply  that 
he  was  first  worshipped  in  the  Zoroastrian  faith.  Some 
Medes  were  Mazdakas.  The  early  Achaemenian  kings  do 
not  seem  to  know  the  prophet's  name  and  Cyrus  worshipped 
any  god  (for  example,  Bel),  just  as  the  Assyrian  king 
Ashurbanipal  recognized  Ormuzd.  A  king  worshipped  any 
god  likely  to  be  useful,  politically  or  otherwise.  Even  Da- 
rius, a  Mazdaean  who  is  thought  by  some  scholars  to  have 
been  a  real  Zoroastrian,  admits  the  existence  of  other  gods 
besides  Ormuzd,  as  no  real  Zoroastrian  would  have  done, 
though  to  him  Ormuzd  is  the  "great  god  who  made  earth 
and  heaven  and  made  Darius  the  one  king  over  many."  x 

Further  legends  regarding  the  prophet  relate  that  Vish- 
taspa was  converted  to  Zoroaster's  belief  when  the  latter 
was  forty-two  years  old,  after  Zoroaster  had  been  preach- 
ing for  a  dozen  years  without  effect  save  that  he  converted 

1  Darius  shows  no  acquaintance  with  the  figure  of  Ahriman  or 
with  those  of  the  archangels;  but  the  argument  from  silence  here 
has  little  weight. 


374  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

his  own  cousin  after  ten  years  of  instruction.  This  king 
had  two  councillors,  brothers,  who  supported  Zoroaster  as 
they  supported  the  king,  and  with  their  help  Zoroaster  (or 
Vishtaspa)  soon  converted  by  force,  in  religious  warfare, 
the  whole  kingdom.  At  the  age  of  seventy-seven  the  aged 
warrior-prophet  was  killed  in  one  of  these  religious  wars, 
while  righting  against  Turan,  says  tradition.1  Not  much 
besides  this  is  related  of  the  prophet's  personal  affairs.  As 
a  court-favourite  he  married  a  daughter  of  one  of  these 
councillors,  Frashaoshtra,  and  his  daughter  Pourucishta  mar- 
ried the  other  brother,  Jamaspa,  traditional  author  of  the 
Vendidad,  really  a  late  priestly  work.  Tradition  gives  his 
lineage  and  tells  of  three  wives  and  several  children.  Like 
the  detailed  account  of  the  religious  wars  and  conversions 
of  foreigners  in  India  and  Greece,  these  tales  may  be  fictions 
of  succeeding  generations. 

But  what  emerges  as  important  from  the  mass  of  tradi- 
tion is  the  fact  that  we  really  have  a  double  life  of  Zoroaster, 
one  the  life  revealed  in  his  own  words  and  the  earliest  texts, 
another  that  invented  by  religious  credulity.  According  to 
the  first,  Zoroaster  was  a  man  of  good  birth,  lofty  aims,  and 
pure  nature,  but  in  no  wise  a  supernatural  being ;  according 
to  the  second,  he  was  a  glorified  and  supernatural  man, 
whose  conception  was  immaculate,  whose  mother  was  di- 
vinely ordained  for  her  holy  office ;  at  whose  birth  all  crea- 
tion laughed  with  joy2  and  evil  demons  fled  aghast;  who, 
when  grown,  was  conducted  by  an  archangel  into  the  pres- 
ence of  God,  and  in  glory  unutterable  received  divine  reve- 
lation ;  who,  finally,  after  seven  visions  and  after  once  being 
tempted  by  the  Evil  One,  died  fighting  for  the  true  faith  and 

1  Zoroaster,   like  Buddha,  was  an  aristocrat  by  birth,  belonging 
to  the  noble  family  of  Spitama.     Like  Buddha  also  he  (at  twenty) 
abandoned  his  family  to  study  religion.     He  studied  for  ten  years, 
began  to  preach  at  thirty,  and  made  one  convert  by  the  time  he  was 
forty.    His  first  vision  or  revelation  came  to  him  at  the  age  of 
thirty.    Vishtaspa  converted  thousands  by  slaying  the  unconvertable ! 

2  Zoroaster  himself  "smiled  when  born."     His  spirit   (soul)  was 
kept  in  the  Horn  till  God's  glory  had  purified  his  mother's  body. 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        375 

yet  is  not  extinct ;  for  in  the  fulness  of  time  shall  be  born  of 
his  seed,  miraculously  preserved  in  the  Seistan  lake,  another 
even  greater  than  he,  the  Saoshyant  or  saviour,  who  shall 
bring  salvation  and  everlasting  bliss  to  the  pious,  and  utterly 
destroy  those  that  have  opposed  without  cessation  the  com- 
ing of  the  millennium.  This  view  is  quite  different  from 
that  of  the  Prophet  himself  who,  as  a  mere  man,  wanders 
disconsolate  and  cries : 

To  what  land  shall  I  turn,  whither  shall  I  go? 
I  am  separated  from  relatives  and  from  friends ; 1 
The  people  and  the  rulers  of  the  land,  they  treat  me  ill. 
Unto  thee  I  lament,  O  Wise  Spirit,  give  help  unto  me. 

Zoroastrian  literature,  which  goes  under  the  general  name 
of  A  vesta,  perhaps  "tradition"  (Zend  Avesta,  meaning 
"  Commentary  and  Avesta  "),  consists  of  the  Yasna,  Yashts, 
and  the  Vendidad,  with  some  supplementary  works.  Old- 
est and  most  important,  the  liturgical  Yasna  comprise  songs, 
Gathas,  some  of  which  may  have  been  composed  by  Zoro- 
aster himself,  supplemented  by  minor  litanies  called  Vis- 
pered,  "  all  lords."  The  Yashts,  twenty-one  hymns  to  an- 
cient divinities  and  heroes,  are  in  part  old,  so  that  they  are 
usually  placed,  together  with  the  Haptanghaiti,  an  early 
prose  work,  next  to  the  Gathas;  but  some  Yashts  are  quite 
late,  probably  later  than  the  Vendidad,  another  prose  work 
perhaps  meaning  "  against  demons."  Besides  these,  there 
are  minor  prayers  and  fragments  (Khorda,  little,  Avesta), 
and  this  whole  material  is  supplemented  by  late  Pahlavi 
texts  (such  as  the  Bundahish  and  the  Dinkard),  which  con- 
tain much  valuable  traditional  matter,  though  they  are  them- 
selves as  late  or  later  than  the  Christian  era.  Except  for  the 
Gathas,  of  unknown  antiquity,  the  literature  included  under 
the  headings  Yasna,  Yashts  and  Vendidad  may  date  from 
the  fifth  to  the  third  century  B.  c.,  though  its  present  form  is 

1  The  exact  meaning  is  doubtful  but  seems  to  show  that  he  was 
a  wanderer  and  the  fact  that  he  became  known  first  as  a  Median 
Magupat  (leader  of  the  Magi,  Mobed)  does  not  militate  against, 
but  rather  supports,  the  view  that  he  was  not  a  Median  by  birth. 


3?6  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

in  the  edition  of  the  third  century  A.  D.  In  the  centuries 
preceding  the  Christian  era  there  was  a  rapid  decadence  of 
faith  and  there  was  no  early  redaction  of  the  holy  books. 
Alexander  destroyed  one  of  the  "  golden  "  copies  at  Samark- 
and and  Persepolis  and  the  other  was  lost.  Hence,  it  is  said, 
we  possess  only  fragments  of  the  original  scriptures.  But 
the  old  texts  were  collected  in  the  first  century  A.  D.,  and  the 
first  Sassanian  king,  Ardashir  (226-240  A.  D.),  had  them  re- 
edited  under  Tansar,  a  priestly  scholar  who  was  anxious  to 
purify  the  scriptures,  so  that  he  would  not  have  introduced 
foreign  ideas  into  them.  The  dialect  of  the  Gathas  is  very 
like  that  of  the  Vedas,  so  that  these  hymns  could  not  have 
been  forged,  and  they  contain  the  gist  of  Zoroastrian  be- 
lief. Additions  were  made  to  the  text  under  Shapur  I  (240- 
271  A.  D.),  perhaps  as  late  as  Shapur  II  (310-379),  and  the 
Pahlavi  texts  did  not  attain  their  present  form  till  the  sixth 
century  A.  D.  ;  but  we  are  not  dependent  on  these  later  texts 
for  our  understanding  of  the  early  religion.  With  such 
additions  as  all  scriptures  have,  we  may  confidently  believe 
that  the  main  outlines  of  Zoroaster's  religion  as  we  know  it 
have  been  preserved  since  the  time  of  the  Achaemenides 
(559-230  B.C.).1 

Zoroaster  himself  says  that  what  he  did  was  to  purify  the 
old  faith.  That  is,  he  did  not  create  a  religion  but  improved 
it.  He  constructed  his  religion  upon  one  that  already  recog- 
nized a  Wise  Spirit  and  a  Holy  Order  (of  the  universe),  as 
well  as  the  cult  of  sun,  moon,  certain  stars,  earth,  fire,  water, 

1  Darmesteter's  theory,  brilliantly  expounded,  that  the  body  of  the 
literature  dates  from  the  period  of  the  Sassanides  (226-651  A. D.),  is 
now  thoroughly  discredited.  He  believed  that  the  Logos  theios 
of  Philo  Judaeus  is  reflected  in  the  Good  Mind,  and  in  the  ideal 
Fravashi  he  saw  Plato's  idea.  But  the  Good  Mind  is  far  older 
than  Philo  and  the  Avesta  knows  nothing  of  ideas  of  abstract  quali- 
ties or  inorganic  substances.  All  was  in  confusion  in  Persia  from 
the  death  of  Alexander  to  the  end  of  the  Parthian  period  of  the 
Arsacides  (250  B.C.  to  226  A. D.),  but  the  cult  of  archangels  was 
known  much  earlier.  By  400  B.  c.  their  names  appear  in  the  Cappa- 
docian  calendar.  Artaxerxes  was  a  Zoroastrian  (465-425  B.C.)  and 
the  Amesha  Spentas  are  at  least  pre-Alexandrian  (Theopompus  or 
Hermippus  of  Smyrna  is  authority  for  Plutarch,  Isis  and  Osiris). 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       377 

and  the  Manes.     Even  in  his  new  form  of  religion  was  still 
preserved  the  reverence  for  the  sacred  moon-plant,  which 
he  personally  abhorred;  he  inherited  also  a  stock  of  Vedic 
legends  regarding  the  Dragon-slayer,  the  conflict  between  the 
powers  helpful  to  man  and  those  injurious  to  man.     But  into 
these  elementary  religious  notions  Zoroaster  introduced  a 
new  idea.     In  religious  belief  prior  to  Zoroaster,  each  indi- 
vidual spiritual  power  was  good  or  bad  only  as  it  helped 
or  injured  man.     Zoroaster  established  a  criterion  other  than 
usefulness,  to  determine  whether  a  power  was  good  or  bad, 
by  making  an  ethical  distinction  between  the  spirits.     The 
"  Eternal  Order,"  under  whose  sway  stood  even  the  gods, 
was  not  enough ;  the  Order,  he  insisted,  was  not  only  eternal 
but  it  was  moral;  and  the  great  Spirit  was  not  only  eternal 
and  wise  but  was  also  moral.     Zoroaster  himself  practically 
recognizes  this  one  spirit  as  God,  ignoring  other  gods.     But 
as  these  could  not  be  ignored  forever,  since  they  were  firmly 
established  among  the  people,  all  the  world  was  soon  divided 
into  friends  and  foes  of  this  Order  and  Spirit,  as  good  or 
evil.     All  the  old  gods  who  could  represent  moral  elevation 
were  thus  grouped  as  servitors  of  the  ethical  ideal  incorpor- 
ated in  the  form  of  the  great  Wise  Spirit ;  those  incapable  of 
being  ranged  thus  were  set  off  as  enemies  of  the  Holy  Order 
and  Wise  Spirit.     In  other  words,  many  of  the  Vedic  divin- 
ities in  this  way  became  demons  and  devils,  while  some  re- 
mained on  the  side  of  good.     Over  the  universe  then  rose  the 
figure  of  the  Wise  Spirit  himself,  Ahura  Mazda  (Ormuzd), 
who  was   in  pre-Zoroastrian   days  the   one   pre-eminently 
ethical  figure  of  the  old  pantheon.1     Yet  the  Indie  figure, 
though  ethical,  was  not  consistently  moral.     He  ensnared 
as  well  as  helped  man ;  he  was  sometimes  demoniac  as  well 
as  divine ;  he  was  also  a  close  associate  of  immoral  powers. 
Moreover,  the  Indie  pantheon  as  a  whole  had  no  ethical 

1  With  the  word  mazda,  "  greatly  wise,"  compare  what  is  said  of 
the  Asura  called  Varuna  (Heaven  Spirit)  in  the  Rig  Veda: 
"  Greatly  wise  was  the  nature  of  him  who  established  heaven  and 
earth,"  etc.,  where  dhira  mahina  (janiinshi)  translates,  as  it  were, 
Mazda.  Mazdah  Ahura  is  the  old  form  or  Mazda (h)  alone. 


378  '  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

standing,  and  even  its  highest  representative  was  not  freed 
from  his  nature- form ;  he  was  still  the  material  Heaven-god. 
But  the  Wise  Spirit  of  Zoroastrianism  is  no  form  of  nature, 
neither  sky,  nor  moon,  nor  sun,  but  spirit  only  and  withal 
the  spirit  of  truth,  purity,  and  justice.  The  great  advance 
therefore  made  by  Zoroaster  may  be  expressed  in  two 
words  by  saying  that  he  made  religion  ethical  and  spiritual. 
God  is  a  spirit,  not  a  nature-god ;  and  God  is  good.1 

Although  the  old  gods  persisted  and  were  still  divine,  as 
far  as  they  could  be  retained,  yet  before  the  august  form  of 
Ormuzd  they  shrank  of  themselves  and  served  merely  to 
throw  his  greatness  into  stronger  relief.  And  like  him  were 
the  attributes  of  Ormuzd,  personified  as  spiritual  powers  of 
God.  Yet,  as  thus  personified,  they  appear  as  real  persons 
and  are  regarded  as  archangels  of  God.  Opposed  to  these 
stood  the  evil  powers  of  the  universe,  and  in  course  of  time 
they  too  were  grouped  as  a  host  headed  by  one  supreme  Evil 
Spirit,  around  whom  stood,  battling  for  evil,  spirits  really 
older  than  he,  all  the  immoral  forces  of  the  world  as  they 
were  now  conceived,  many  of  them  the  degraded  Devas  of 
the  ancient  order.  Many,  however,  were  but  the  personified 
ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to ;  for  primitive  thought  first  thinks  of 
ill  as  itself  evil:  hunger,  drought,  disease  are  not  sent  by 
demons  but  are  themselves  demons.  Famine  is  a  demon 
driven  away  by  grain,  because  on  grain  being  eaten  Famine 
dies  of  inanition.  The  army  of  the  Evil  One  thus  consisted 
partly  of  independent  demons  and  partly  of  personified 
qualities  of  himself,  in  exact  counterpart  to  the  army  of  the 
Lord.  At  first  this  horde  is  rather  indeterminate ;  the  demon 
of  rapine,  Fury,  leads  them,  under  the  Worst  Mind  (Evil 
Mind),  whose  second  self  or  representative  is  the  Lie- 
demon.  This  is  clearly  a  mental  antithesis  to  the  Good 
Spirit,  the  natural  dualism  of  every  primitive  man,  who 
recognizes  primarily  a  good  synonymous  with  the  pleasant 
and  an  evil  synonymous  with  the  unpleasant,  but  elevated  to 

1  Only  in  late  texts  is  Ormuzd  represented  as  wearing  a  tiara  and 
ring  and  carrying  a  sceptre ;  in  some,  as  sun-god,  he  even  has  wings. 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        379 

the  plane  of  the  moral.  Zoroaster's  flock  was  a  much  abused 
and  outraged  congregation  and  his  wrath  is  divided  between 
hatred  of  his  opponents  as  unbelievers  and  fear  of  them  as 
oppressors.  One  of  our  eminent  Avestan  scholars  has  said 
that  the  most  striking  feature  of  Zoroaster's  faith,  as  taught 
in  the  Gathas,  is  dualism ;  but  it  is  more  than  this.  Dualism 
of  a  sort  is  as  primitive  as  savagery ;  the  striking  feature  in 
Zoroaster's  faith  is  the  application  of  an  ethical  dualism  with 
logical  insistence  to  every  aspect  of  existence  and  the  thor- 
ough co-ordination  of  physical  and  spiritual  elements  into  a 
homogeneous  ethical  conception  of  life.  Again,  from  the 
religious  point  of  view,  there  is  in  Zoroastrianism  no  attempt 
to  conciliate  or  propitiate  evil  spirits,  with  whom  the  ortho- 
dox believer  has  no  dealings ;  he  rights  against  them  without 
remission. 

The  Evil  One  is  of  course  personified,  as  all  his  99,999 
diseases  are  devils ;  but  it  is  a  question  how  far  the  personi- 
fication went  at  first.  In  India,  Fury,  Fear,  and  Disease  are 
"  children  "  of  Shiva,  and  so  Fury  is  a  child  of  the  Evil 
Mind,  while  Good  Mind  and  Piety  are,  respectively,  son 
and  daughter  of  the  Wise  Spirit;  Righteousness  is  even  his 
"  son  by  generation."  But  all  this  is  poetic  or  prophetic 
imagery  in  great  part.  Even  the  renowned  description  of 
Ormuzd  and  Ahriman  in  the  Gathas  is  not  necessarily  more 
than  this :  "  Two  primal  things  [principles,  neuter] ,  a  bet- 
ter thing  and  a  worse  thing,  in  thought,  word,  and  deed  — 
come  together  as  twins,  yet  separate  and  independent,  to 
make  life  and  death  (not-life),  to  determine  how  the  world 
at  last  shall  be,  for  the  wicked  the  worst  life,  for  the  holy 
the  best  mental  state."  x  Of  these,  evil  chose  the  worst ; 

1  This  is  Zoroaster's  own  definition  of  "  Heaven,"  vahishtem 
mano,  the  best  mind.  The  personified  "better  thing"  appears  at 
once  as  Spenishta  Mainyu,  the  most  holy  mind.  The  two  spirits 
are  described  (Yasna  45)  as  agreeing  in  naught,  "neither  (says  the 
Good  to  the  Evil  One)  do  our  minds,  our  teachings,  nor  our  con- 
cepts, nor  our  beliefs,  nor  our  words,  nor  our  deeds,  nor  yet  our 
consciences  nor  souls  agree  in  aught."  There  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose (with  some  scholars)  that  in  the  above  description  the  Holiest 
Mind  is  not  one  with  the  Wise  Spirit. 


380  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

but  the  most  holy  mind,  clothed  with  heaven,  chose  right- 
eousness. The  (neutral)  Daevas  could  not  determine  which 
side  to  choose;  but  at  last  the  Worst  Mind  was  chosen  by 
them  and  they  rushed  forth  with  Fury,  as  demon,  to  cor- 
rupt human  lives.  Piety,  guardian  of  earth,  approached; 
with  her  came  Power,  Good  Mind  and  Right  Order,  and 
Piety  gave  a  body  to  the  souls  of  men  not  yet  incorporate. 
When  at  last  vengeance  shall  come  upon  these  wretched  sin- 
ners, then,  says  Zoroaster  to  his  Lord,  Ormuzd,  "  then 
thy  kingdom  (Power)  shall  come  through  (thy)  Good 
Mind  (working  in  men),  since  the  Good  Mind  (probable 
subject)  issues  commands  to  those  who  shall  deliver  the 
Lie-demon  into  the  two  hands  of  Righteousness  (Right 
Order),  and  may  we  be  of  those  who  effect  this,  the  great 
renewal,  and  make  the  world  go  on  (to  perfection)  ;  yea, 
may  we  be  as  the  Wise  Spirits  (plural  of  Ahura  Mazda!), 
even  as  Righteousness  (the  wise  spirit)  and  the  other  wise 
spirits.  Then  shall  the  blow  of  destruction  fall  on  the  Lie- 
demon,  but  in  the  happy  abode  of  Good  Thought  and  of 
Ahura  Mazda  the  righteous  saints  shall  gather." 

Here,  in  this  exiguous  "  system,"  the  conception  of  the 
evil  mind  and  good  mind  is  that  of  personified  principles. 
The  good  mind  is  in  man  as  well  as  in  Ormuzd;  all  his 
attributes,  not  yet  grouped  as  personified  archangels,  are, 
like  himself,  Ahura  Mazdas.  God  is  thus  addressed  by 
Zoroaster  as  a  plural  or  as  singular  (the  plural,  Ahura  Maz- 
das, appears  again  in  Gatha,  31,  4).  The  Evil  Mind  is 
also  inherent  in  all  its  creations,  as  it  enters  into  the  per- 
verted demons,  who  at  first  were  neither  good  nor  bad  but 
simply  spirits.  Zoroaster  raises  no  question  as  to  the  com- 
parative power  of  the  Good  and  Evil  Minds;  he  assumes 
throughout  that  the  former  will  finally  overcome,  with  the 
help  of  the  good  mind  in  man,  all  the  hosts  of  evil.  In 
other  words,  Zoroaster  is  a  monotheist  of  the  strictest  type. 
He  does  not  analyse,  he  is  no  metaphysician,  no  theologian  ; 
he  is  a  prophet ;  he  teaches  dogmatically  and  denounces  solely 
the  "seed  of  evil"  (the  Daevas).  He  feels  himself  God's 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       3&I 

chosen  scourge  to  be  a  terror  to  infidels.  "  When  (he  says 
to  Ormuzd)  thy  angel  Faith  came  to  me  and  said,  Who  art 
thou?  then,  I,  Zoroaster,  said  to  her,  (I  am)  he  that  tor- 
ments the  sinners  and  avenges  the  righteous  and  I  would 
devote  myself  (so  long  as  I  may  praise  thee  and  sing  my 
song)  to  thee  and  to  the  preparation  for  thy  kingdom  and 
the  laudation  of  the  holy  Fire.  .  .  .  They  said  that  I  bring 
only  woe;  but  that  will  I  do  which  thou  has  said  to  be 
best."  Again  he  asks,  praising  God :  "  Who  is  the  father 
of  the  Right  Order?  Who  gave  to  sun  and  stars  their 
path, —  who  save  thee  ?  Who  holds  the  earth  below  and  the 
clouds  above,  that  they  fall  not?  Who  made  the  water  and 
the  plants  .  .  .  and  who  inspires  our  thoughts  ?  This  I  ask, 
do  thou  tell  me  aright,  O  Spirit,  who,  as  a  skilful  artisan, 
madest  the  light  and  the  darkness  .  .  .  who  madest  the 
dawns  and  the  noon  and  midnight  .  .  .  and  tell  me  how  I 
shall  purify  the  faith  of  my  people.  All  other  (gods)  save 
thee  I  look  upon  with  hate.  How  may  I  banish  the  Lie- 
demon,  thou  father  of  the  good  mind,  thou  whose  daughter 
is  Piety  ?  .  .  .  Now  come  the  Karpans  and  Kavis  to  slay  us, 
they  whose  own  souls  and  consciences  will  cry  out  upon 
them  when  they  approach  the  Bridge  of  Separation;  but  in 
the  abode  of  the  Lie  for  ever  shall  be  their  habitation.  .  .  . 
Yet  if  among  the  Turanians  there  arise  those  who  help  the 
settlements  of  Piety  (who  guards  earth),  even  with  them 
shall  the  Lord  have  his  habitation.  .  .  .  Unto  the  Lord  we 
offer  a  sacrifice  of  meat  and  pray  for  thy  Fire,  that  it  may 
be  our  help,  but  to  those  who  hate  us  may  it  be  a  hurt  even 
as  with  weapons.  .  .  .  May  I  be  thine,  with  thy  righteous- 
ness and  thy  good  mind,  and  care  for  the  poor.  May  I 
declare  thee  (as  a  spirit)  apart  from  the  Daevas  and  (evil) 
men.  If  really,  O  Wise  Lord,  thou  art  (one)  with  right- 
eousness and  good  mind,  then  give  me  a  sign  that  I  may 
approach  thee  more  devoutly.  Only  Thee  do  I  know ;  save 
me  through  thy  righteousness.  Teach  me  the  path  of  right- 
eousness trod  by  the  good  mind  living  in  thy  saints,  that 
path  which  consists  in  the  precepts  of  the  saviours  of  men." 


3&2  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Zoroaster  recognizes  the  existence  of  evil,  expressed 
strongly  in  the  behaviour  of  those  oppressors  whom  he  de- 
nounces.- He  also  recognizes  the  spiritual  power  and  angelic 
character  of  the  Good  Mind,  Right  (Righteousness),  Faith, 
and  Piety,  yet  without  including  them  in  any  group  of  the 
Spentas  (holy  ones).  In  his  devotion  to  the  Spirit  he 
adores,  in  his  assurance  that  this  Spirit  will  lead  him  to  vic- 
tory, in  his  exultation  over  fallen  foes,  in  his  appeal  to  the 
sword  and  grim  determination  to  extirpate  unbelievers,  he 
is  a  Mahommed  of  the  Ayrans,  certainly  the  most  heroic 
religious  figure  on  the  Aryan  stage.  In  the  extracts  given 
above  almost  all  the  theology  of  the  Gathas  is  contained. 
It  will  be  noticed  that  Zoroaster  hates  all  those  who  assume 
to  be  gods  besides  Ormuzd ;  yet  of  course  he  does  not  deny 
the  existence  of  nature-spirits,  such  as  the  "  evil  wind " 
and  virtuous  Sun,  whom  sinners  repudiate  and  of  whom 
he  speaks  as  of  a  spirit.  He  knows  the  Judgment  Bridge 
which  rests  on  Mount  Alborj,  and  reveres  both.  But  he 
cares  not  at  all  for  any  gods  save  God  as  manifested  in  his 
Right  Order,  Piety,  Good  Mind,  and  coming  kingdom.  His 
first  is  the  prayer,  "  Thy  kingdom  come ;  thy  will  be  done 
on  earth  as  it  is  in  Heaven."  His  first  the  conception  of 
heaven  and  hell  as  mental  states,  "  The  mind  is  its  own  place 
and  in  itself  can  make  a  heaven  of  hell,  a  hell  of  heaven." 
God  is  within  us;  our  first  care  is  to  attain  God's  good 
mind,  and  our  second  is  to  relieve  all  suffering  (moral  and 
physical)  and  shelter  the  honest  poor.  Thus  he  is  first  also 
to  make  public  service  a  part  of  religion. 

Of  liberal  thought  there  is  striking  evidence  in  the  lauda- 
tion of  Turanians  who  serve  God ;  no  chosen  people  is  God's ; 
but  each  man  as  an  individual  must  answer  to  God.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  heretic  is  no  object  of  mercy.  The  Zoro- 
astrian  will  shelter  the  "  honest  poor,"  but  not  the  unbe- 
liever ;  no  heretic  is  honest,  he  is  a  son  of  the  Lie.  So,  too, 
in  later  days,  if  a  physician  wishes  to  try  a  new  cure  which 
may  be  dangerous,  he  is  enjoined  to  try  it  on  a  heretic  not  on 
a  believer. 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        3^3 

The  recrudescence  of  popular  religion  becomes  manifest 
even  in  the  literature  next  following  the  expression  of  Zoro- 
aster's own  belief  in  the  Gathas.  The  nature-gods,  even  the 
Horn,  which  he  would  not  even  name  but  which  he  inveighed 
against,  rise  again  as  spirits  worthy  of  worship,  and  are 
addressed  in  terms  which  show  that  they  are  virtually  gods. 
Then  Zoroaster  himself  is  revered.  The  Hostile  Spirit, 
Angra  Mainyu,  who  appears  only  once  so  named  in  the 
Gathas,  becomes  the  substitute  for  the  more  indefinite  Lie- 
Spirit,  which  Zoroaster  abhorred.  Finally  Zoroaster's  Holy 
Spirit  is  interpreted  as  but  one  aspect  of  God,  as  the  Evil 
Mind  is  another  aspect,  an  idea  that  never  occurred  to  Zo- 
roaster, to  whom  the  Evil  Mind  and  Wise  Spirit  were  anti- 
thetic but  only  Mazda  was  immortal. 

One  of  the  first  changes  occurs  in  the  schematic  grouping 
of  the  archangels.  These  formed  at  first  no  fixed  group, 
their  number  was  indeterminate ;  they  with  Ormuzd  made  a 
holy  body,  in  which,  however,  it  was  uncertain  whether 
Fire  was  felt  to  be  an  "  archangel "  or  not.  The  Gathas 
mention  them  but  not  as  a  unit  and  do  not  confine  the  epithet 
"  good  "  to  the  Good  Mind.  But  in  the  first  literature  after 
the  Gathas  they  appear  as  a  fixed  band  with  unvarying  attri- 
butes and  places.  They  have  long  since  been  compared  not 
only  with  the  Vedic  Adityas,  also  a  group  chiefly  of  abstrac- 
tions, and  with  Babylonian  "  sevens,"  but  also  with  the 
Hebraic  archangels  of  Tobit,  xii.  15,  and  Apocalypse,  v.  6, 
"  the  seven  spirits  of  God  sent  forth  into  all  the  earth." 
The  first  is  Vohumano,  the  Good  Mind  of  God,  who  works 
in  man,  concerns  himself  with  the  flock  and  the  faithful, 
welcomes  the  good  to  heaven,  and  is  half  person  from  the 
beginning.  Later  he  has  a  special  cult  of  his  own.  He  is 
aided  by  the  Moon,  in  whom  are  the  seeds  of  the  flock. 
Next  comes  Asha  Vahishta,  Best  Truth  or  Righteousness,  or 
Right  Order,  who  cares  for  Fire.  Then  comes  Khshathra 
Vairya,  Desired  Power,  the  Kingdom  of  God  as  his  author- 
ity which  is  to  rule  the  world;  but  as  an  angel  this  being 
has  the  care  of  metals,  emblematic  of  power.  These  sit  on 


384  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

God's  right  hand;  opposite  to  God  sits  Sraosha,  Faith  or 
Obedience.  On  the  left  sit  the  female  forms,  Spenta  Ar- 
maiti,  Holy  Piety,  goddess  of  earth,  and  the  inseparable  pair 
called  Haurvatat  and  Ameretat,  Wholeness  or  Holiness  and 
Immortality,  who  together  care  for  water  and  plants.1 

These  collectively  are  the  "  Immortal  Holy  Ones," 2 
Amesha  Spentas,  who  appear  as  a  group  as  early  as  the 
Haptanghaiti  or  first  prose.  Plutarch  (50-120  A.  D.)  knows 
them  as  characteristic  of  the  Magian  cult  and  renders  their 
names  into  Greek  as  Eunoia,  Aletheia,  Eunomia,  Sophia, 
Ploutos,  and  (for  Ameretat)  "worker  of  good  hap- 
piness "  (in  Strabo  as  Anatotos,  i.e.  amardatos).  The  prev- 
alence of  Persian  Arta-names  (e.g.  Artaxerxes)  betrays 
familiarity  with  the  Asha,  arta,  idea  of  righteousness.  In 
the  later  texts,  these  angels  are  anthropomorphized  enough 
to  ride  horseback  and  have  attendants,  who  are  the  old 
nature-gods.  These  Amshaspands,  as  they  are  called  later, 
are  also  assigned  to  different  days  and  months  and  each  has 
a  peculiar  flower  and  colour.  Thus  Vohumano  has  white 
as  his  colour,  white  jasmine  as  his  flower,  one  day  of  each 
month  is  his  (compare  our  saints'  days),  and  he  has  one 
double  month  under  his  especial  charge.  The  later  scheme 
then  assigns  one  selected  demon  as  the  special  opponent  of 
each  archangel. 

The  elements  of  later  Zoroastrianism,  partially  recognized 
by  the  founder,  are  further  the  "  holy  ones  "  in  general, 
namely  the  Yazatas,  worshipful  ones  (hagioi  or  hagnoi  from 
the  same  root),  the  modern  Izads,  a  name  which  at  times 
includes  Ormuzd  but  generally  designates  a  special  division 
of  holy  ones  below  the  archangels,  of  whom  Ormuzd  may 
be  regarded  as  the  "  greatest  holy  one."  The  Yazatas  also 
embrace  the  archangels  and  were  naturally  enough  called 

1  Sraosha  may  have  been  added  later  to  keep  intact  the  number 
which  was   diminished  by   one   when   Ormuzd   himself   was    with- 
drawn  from  the  group,   which   originally  merely   represented   the 
Ahuramazdas  as  a  body  consisting  of  God  and  his  attributes.     Asha, 
Vohumano,  and  Mazda  are  often  grouped  as  a  triad. 

2  Spenta  is  etymologically  "  holy "  but  traditionally  "  bountiful." 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        385 

gods  by  the  Greeks.  Thus  Plutarch  speaks  of  twenty-four 
gods  besides  the  archangels.  The  Yasna  recognizes  "  three 
and  thirty  lords  "  of  the  ritual  (compare  the  three-and- 
thirty  gods  of  the  Rig  Veda).  These  Yazatas  are  the  Theoi 
Basileioi  who  have  charge  of  different  parts  of  the  earth. 
At  first  there  is  no  fixed  line  between  these  semi-divine 
beings.  Fire  appears  as  an  archangel  in  Yasna  I,  2,  and 
in  the  Yasht  dedicated  to  Faith  this  angel  "  sits  with  the 
Amesha  Spentas."  But  usually  the  old  nature-gods  serve 
as  helpers  of  the  greater  spirits.  Thus  Fire  is  the  helper 
of  Asha  (Right)  or  Truth,  who  is  opposed  by  Indra,  as 
Vohumano  is  opposed  by  Aka-mano.  The  third  archangel, 
Khshathra,  Eunomia,  the  Power  of  God,  is  helped  by  Mithra, 
being  opposed  by  Saurva  (perhaps  Vedic  Sharva,  Rudra). 
Spenta  Armaiti,  practical  Piety,  whose  charge  is  earth,  is 
the  Sophia  of  the  Greek  and  as  such  is  opposed  by  Taro- 
maiti  or  Pairimaiti  (Pride,  Wrong  Thought),  as  also  by 
Naonhaithya  (the  Vedic  Nasatya).  The  pair  known  as 
Haurvatat  and  Ameretat  (Wholeness  and  Immortality)  care 
for  water  and  plants,  embodying  the  idea  of  the  water  and 
tree  of  life,  the  later  personified  in  the  white  Horn  (Gao- 
kerena),  the  Vedic  Soma-plant.1 

The  nature-gods  thus  included  in  the  mythological  scheme 
are  first  of  all  Fire  and  the  Sun,  then  Water  and  the  Horn 
(Moon-plant),  which  appear  as  most  worthy  of  worship  in 
the  Yasna,  and  then  a  number  of  other  gods,  some  of  which 
are  good  and  some  originally  evil.  At  the  same  early  period, 
possibly  recognized  by  Zoroaster  himself  as  Yazatas,  the 
Manes  or  spirits  of  beings  become  prominent.  These  are 
the  Fravashis  ("confession,"  souls  of  the  dead),  who  help 
men  in  battle,  protect  them  through  life,  and  accompany 
spirits  to  the  next  world.  They  are  treated  in  the  texts  as 
if  they  were  individual  guardian  angels  of  each  living  per- 
son. In  the  creation  they  appear  as  the  souls  before  they 
are  embodied,  but  their  original  identity  with  the  souls  of 

1  Compare  Darmesteter,  Haurvatat  et  Ameretat,  Paris,  1875.  In 
the  earlier  texts  these  two  are  scarcely  personified. 


386  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  departed  is  certain,  though  the  Zoroastrian  presentation 
veils  this  conception.  At  death  the  Fravashi  archetype 
unites  with  the  soul. 

The  number  of  angels  is  practically  unlimited.  One  of 
the  Yashts,  which  are  dedicated  to  the  chief  Yazatas,  speaks 
of  ten  thousand  of  them.  Fire  is  the  most  important,  as  it 
becomes  the  sign  of  the  later  faith  and  of  the  Fire-Wor- 
shippers. Fire,  the  son  of  Ormuzd,  as  Piety  is  his  daugh- 
ter, is  the  life-heat  and  the  "  glory  "  of  kings.  With  him  is 
associated  the  (Vedic)  Nairyosanha  ( Narashansa ) ,  the 
angel  bringing  God's  word  to  man,  though  in  the  Veda  he  is 
the  genius  identified  with  Fire  bringing  man's  praise  to  the 
gods.  Fire-altars,  not  necessarily  in  temples,  were  erected 
all  over  ancient  Iran.  The  cult  may  have  been  strength- 
ened by  the  natural  awe  of  naphtha-wells,  but  could  not  have 
started  with  such  a  source.  Water,  too,  and  the  heavenly 
stream,  Ardvi  Sura  Anahita,  were  objects  of  far-reaching 
worship  as  the  source  of  all  life  (Anahita  was  a  Semitic 
figure,  the  goddesses  of  productivity).  Reverence  was 
paid  also  to  the  eye  of  Ormuzd,  the  sun,  to  the  moon,  and 
to  the  star  Tishtrya  (Sirius),  as  remover  of  drought  (Apao- 
sha,  official  opponent  of  this  star).  The  genius  of  right  as 
justice,  Rashnu,  who  with  golden  scales  weighs  the  deeds  of 
the  dead,  is  associated  with  Faith  (Sraosha)  and  Mithra,  as 
three  judges  of  the  dead  (compare  Minos,  Aeacus,  and 
Rhadamanthus,  or  Christ,  Gabriel,  and  Michael),  and  to 
them  are  devoted  the  tenth,  eleventh,  and  twelfth  Yashts, 
while  the  fourteenth  is  dedicated  to  the  personification  of 
the  Demon-slayer  (Verethraghna),  who  in  the  Sassanian 
period,  beginning  in  the  third  century  A.  D.,  as  genius  of 
victory,  attains  his  highest  importance.  Less  important  but 
still  venerable  and  actually  worshipped  are  mountains,  winds 
(some  winds  are  evil,  however),  heaven,  earth,  the  native 
abstractions,  Daena  (Din),  "Religion,"  Manthra  Spenta, 
the  "  Holy  Word  "  of  Ormuzd  regarded  as  an  angel ;  End- 
less Light,  Aniran ;  and  the  Horn,  to  whom  are  dedicated 
not  only  the  twentieth  Yasht  but  also  Yasna  9,  10,  and  n. 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        387 

The  ministers  of  the  Yazatas  come  still  later,  such  as  Peace, 
Glory,  Blessing  (Afriti),  and  there  are  other  divine  beings 
not  grouped  with  the  Yazatas,  the  most  remarkable  of  whom 
is  the  three-legged  ass,  Khara,  which  stands  in  the  earth- 
surrounding  sea,  Vourukasha,  and  helps  govern  the  world; 
also  a  sacred  ox,  three  birds  of  magical  power,  etc.,  all  astro- 
logical or  mythological  creatures  retained  in  the  net  of  the 
popular  religious  sense  and  utilized  by  the  faith,  much  as 
pagan  belief  was  utilized  by  Christianity.  This  whole  class 
of  spiritual  beings  is  of  the  highest  significance.  It  implies 
that  already,  in  the  earliest  stage  after  the  prophet,  mythol- 
ogy was  again  become  one  of  the  chief  elements  of  the 
religion. 

Opposed  to  all  the  host  of  the  Wise  Spirit  stands  the  host 
of  the  Evil  Spirit,  who  is  at  first  the  Lie-demon  and  then 
becomes  the  Hostile  or  Harmful  Spirit,  Angra  Mainyu, 
Ahriman.  In  the  first  conception  there  are  two  abstractions, 
the  Best  and  Worst  Thought,  presented  as  spirits  utterly 
opposed  and  creating  good  and  evil  in  the  world  under  all 
forms.  Both  are  primeval.  To  Zoroaster  this  evil  spirit  is 
always  the  Lie-demon,  the  evil  thought  as  opposed  to  the 
good  thought  or  the  wise  spirit,  Spenta  Mainyu,  who  is 
sometimes  thought  of  as  an  attribute  of  Ormuzd  and  some- 
times is  Ormuzd  himself.  But  Ahriman  is  never  the  equal 
of  Ormuzd.  He  is  handicapped  by  possessing  only  *'  back- 
ward knowledge  " ;  he  cannot  foresee  and  hence  cannot  initi- 
ate attacks  on  God.  All  he  can  do  is  to  set  up  an  opposed 
power  as  often  as  Ormuzd  invents  a  new  means  of  attack. 
Hence  Ahriman  is  always  too  late,  which  shows  that  the 
dualism  is  not  one  of  equal  powers  but  that  one  is  fore- 
doomed to  defeat.  In  Zoroaster's  own  Gathas  it  is  clear 
that  he  expects  the  ultimate  victory  of  the  Wise  Spirit,  to 
which  he  himself  with  every  true  believer  would  contribute. 

Next  to  Ahriman  the  most  striking  figure  on  the  side  of 
evil  is  Asmodeus,  as  he  is  called  in  the  Book  of  Tobit,  that 
is  Aeshma  Daeva,  named  in  the  Yasna  as  a  demon  of  wrath. 
His  name,  from  ish,  "  throw  "  or  "  strike,"  reminds  one  of 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Diabolos,  but  he  is  not  so  much  "  the  accuser  "  as  the  furi- 
ous smiter,  the  especial  foe  of  the  Faith,  the  impersonation 
of  rapine  and  invasion,  and  the  chief  scourge  of  the  faithful. 
In  Jewish  lore  he  loved  Sara  and  destroyed  her  seven  hus- 
bands.1 The  Nasu,  or  corpse-demon,  is  also  a  popular  evil 
spirit.  As  already  remarked,  some  ancient  gods  appear 
here  on  the  side  of  evil  opposed  to  the  archangels.  Indra 
and  Nasatya  (gods  in  the  Mitanni  inscription  of  1400  B.  c.) 
represent  to  the  Zoroastrian  "  Killing  "  and  "  Disobedience  " 
( Naonhaithya,  not  a  twin  as  in  India).  Agashi,  the  Evil 
Eye,  may  belong  to  this  daeva-group,  of  whom  none  is  so 
sinful  as  Aeshma,  who  is  so  inveterate  a  quarreller  that,  if 
he  cannot  make  trouble  among  his  foes,  he  does  not  hesi- 
tate to  set  at  odds  the  members  of  his  own  community ;  as 
Narada,  the  god-like  seer  of  India,  makes  men  quarrel  if  he 
can  and,  when  he  cannot  do  this,  rouses  the  gods  to  quarrel. 
Abstractions  such  as  envy,  pride,  old  age,  etc.,  in  brief 
whatever  injures  man  physically  or  morally,  whether  dis- 
eases or  hurricane,  drought,  lust,  or  sloth,  are  demons  born 
of  Ahriman's  will  and  righting  for  him.  There  are  others 
who  are  also  not  daevas  but  aiders  of  daevas,  the  Yatus, 
known  to  the  Veda  as  sorcerers;  the  Druj,  equally  old;  and 
the  Pairikas,  a  more  modern  creation,  who  are  associated 
with  bandits  and  wolves.  Pairikas  are  fair  maidens  super- 
naturally  endowed  with  evil,  who  work  in  the  earth,  the 
plants,  and  the  waters,  bewitching  the  stars,  so  that  they 
give  no  rain.  In  the  Yashts  they  appear  as  "  worm-stars," 
combatted  by  Sirius,  and  they  may  have  been  originally 
shooting-stars  or  meteors.  One  of  them  is  Drought  itself. 
Later  (Persian)  mythology  converted  them  into  fair  maid- 
ens, sirens  (English  Peri).  Among  the  beings  opposed  to 
Ormuzd  a  conspicuous  place  is  taken  by  the  dragon,  Azhi 
Dahaka,  whose  home  is  in  Bapel  (Babylon),  a  Druj  half 
human,  half  beast,  with  three  heads,  who  overcomes  Yima 
and  rules  a  thousand  years,  possibly,  as  Darmesteter  sup- 

1When  Tobit's  son  finally  married  Sara,  Asmodeus  was  driven 
away  by  the  fume  of  a  dead  fish  (compare  Paradise  Lost,  iv.  168). 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       389 

posed,  a  reminiscence  of  Semitic  control.  This  dragon 
creates  drought  and  disease.  Planets,  scorpions,  snakes, 
and  frogs,  and  the  mythical  Ganderewa  Upapa  or  evil  spirit 
in  the  water  (Vedic  Gandharva,  also  in  water)  are  lesser 
creations  of  Ahriman.  Unbelievers,  Kavis,  Karpans,  belong 
to  the  general  class  of  opponents  of  Ormuzd.  Heretics  are 
always  prominent,  as  if  the  religion  of  Zoroaster  had  never 
been  without  its  foes,  as  its  practical  teaching  was  in  reality 
never  fully  sustained.  Thus  in  regard  to  the  dakhma,  tower 
for  exposing  the  dead,  despite  the  strict  injunctions  against 
burning  and  burying,  the  older  (or  usual)  custom  prevailed 
in  part  and  the  erection  of  the  dakhma  was  not  universal. 
The  custom  of  exposing  the  dead  was  Median;  Zoroaster 
himself  says  nothing  about  it.  It  was  probably  a  local 
practice,  such  as  is  still  found  in  India,  America,  etc. 

The  base  of  Zoroastrian  morality  is  neither  that  of  India 
nor  of  the  Semites.  Every  man  is  responsible  for  his  own 
deeds;  every  act  of  his  is  recorded;  he  alone  is  the  architect 
of  his  own  future  fate.  The  shibboleth  of  this  belief  is  em- 
bodied in  the  standing  formula,  "  good  thought,  good  word, 
good  deed  " ;  "  I  practise  good,  and  renounce  evil."  But  this 
goodness  does  not  rest  with  a  negative  avoidance  of  evil. 
The  practice  of  good  includes  justice,  mercy,  generosity,  and 
kindness  in  general.  Practically  it  is  shown  especially  in 
business  relations,  for  it  emphasizes  avoidance  not  only  of 
lying  but  of  debts.  What  Herodotus  (I,  133)  says  of  the 
Persians  is  true  of  all  Zoroastrians :  "  They  are  not  al- 
lowed even  to  mention  the  things  they  are  not  allowed  to  do. 
The  greatest  disgrace  for  them  is  to  tell  a  lie;  and  next  to 
that  to  be  in  debt,  and  this  for  many  other  reasons,  but  espe- 
cially because  they  think  that  one  who  is  in  debt  must  neces- 
sarily tell  lies."  Physical  culture  was  extolled  as  good  and 
moderation  in  eating  and  in  drinking  intoxicants.  Sexual 
relations  were  in  general  on  a  footing  appropriate  to  high 
thinking  and  wicked  women  are  cursed,  sexual  sin,  seduc- 
tion, etc.,  condemned.  But  it  must  be  granted  that,  as  asceti- 
cism was  tabooed,  so  there  was  no  attempt  to  induce  the 


39°  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Zoroastrian  to  rise  to  a  higher  plane  in  relation  to  women. 
Concubinage  was  allowed ;  polygamy  was  common ;  incest 
was  the  rule.  And  it  must  be  admitted  also  that  it  is  not 
religion  alone  which  makes  the  Zoroastrian  sober  and  mod- 
erate. The  race  is  sober  and  restrained,  not  given  to  ex- 
cesses. How  far  the  religion  is  from  teaching  ascetic  prac- 
tices may  be  seen  from  the  statement  that  wealth  and  a 
large  family  are  signs  of  religious  virtue  (the  poor  man  is 
not  so  good  as  the  rich  man)  ;  the  remark  that  "  who  sows 
corn  sows  religion";  the  injunction  as  a  religious  rule  to 
practise  agriculture  and  slay  vermin  and  raise  dogs  and 
cattle.  All  this  points  to  a  practical  morality,  the  aim  of 
which  is  to  improve  economic  conditions  as  well  as  to  fur- 
ther religion.  Compare  Vendidad  4,  47-49 :  "  He  who  has 
children  is  far  better  than  he  who  is  childless ;  he  who  has 
riches  is  far  better  than  he  who  has  none;  and  he  who 
fills  himself  with  meat  is  filled  with  the  good  spirit  more 
than  he  who  does  not  eat  meat,  for  the  latter  is  no  better 
than  a  dead  man,  and  the  former  is  better  than  he  by  the 
worth  of  an  ox,  by  the  worth  of  a  man,"  a  statement  in 
striking  contrast  with  the  asceticism  cultivated  by  the  Mani- 
chaeans. 

This  very  practical  religion  teaches  that  to  atone  for  sins 
one  may  be  purified  by  doing  good,  as  well  as  by  being 
anointed  with  holy  things  or  by  being  beaten.  Thus,  if  one 
has  sinned,  let  him  build  a  useful  bridge  or  dig  a  canal  and 
so  equalize  the  wrong  with  a  good  act,  or  go  farther  and 
let  the  good  outweigh  the  evil.  It  is  necessary  to  know  this 
in  order  to  comprehend  the  doctrine  of  that  even  state  after 
death  which  is  neither  heaven  nor  hell.  In  all  cases,  how- 
ever, one  must  repent  of  the  sin  and  confess  it.1  Trivial 
sins  are  many  in  number,  such  as  going  barefoot,  combing 
one's  hair  over  the  fire,  etc.,  but  this  is  due  to  the  feeling  of 

1  It  has  been  said  that  "  The  difference  between  Judaism  and 
Zoroastrianism  is  that  though  both  have  retribution  after  death, 
Judaism  insists  on  repentance."  The  implication  is  erroneous. 
Zoroaster  insists  on  repentance. 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       391 

great  veneration  for  the  earth  and  fire  as  divinities,  and 
what  is  trivial  to  us  is  of  course  not  a  norm  in  such  cases. 
The  gravest  sin  in  our  eyes,  on  the  other  hand,  is  to  the 
Zoroastrian  a  law  of  conduct.  This  is  legalized  incest. 
The  marriage  of  the  closest  relations  is  not  looked  upon  as 
a  sin  but  a  duty,  to  keep  pure  the  strain  of  blood.  Yet  this 
again  is  not  a  religious  but  a  racial  matter,  and  it  is  need- 
less to  say  that  modern  Parsis  do  not  practise  the  custom 
(common  to  Persia  and  Egypt). 

The  confession  and  prayer  of  repentance  of  the  Zoro- 
astrian religion  show  how  fundamental  are  two  points,  faith 
in  Zoroaster  and  belief  in  the  resurrection.  The  worship  of 
Mazda,  the  Wise  Spirit,  is  bound  up  with  the  faith  in  the 
prophet,  and  is  now  inconceivable  without  it.  Thus  the 
confession  says :  "  I  am  a  worshipper  of  Ahura  Mazda,  a 
member  of  the  order  of  Zoroaster.  This  I  confess,  as  a 
praiser  and  confessor  of  the  religion,  and  I  praise  aloud  the 
thought  well  thought,  the  word  well  said,  the  deed  well  done. 
I  praise  the  faith  of  Mazda,  the  holy  belief  which  is  the  best 
and  most  beautiful  belief,  the  most  beautiful  of  all  religions 
which  exist  and  are  yet  to  be,  the  faith  of  Ahura  Mazda,  the 
faith  of  Zoroaster.  Unto  Ahura  Mazda  do  I  ascribe  all 
good  and  such  shall  be  the  worship  of  the  Mazdayasnians 
forever." 

The  Patet  Erani  is  a  compendium  of  Zoroastrian  belief : 
"  I  doubt  not  the  good  faith,  the  faith  in  Mazda.  I  believe 
in  the  good  faith.  I  believe  in  the  coming  resurrection,  in 
the  later  body,  in  the  passage  of  the  Bridge  of  Judgment,  in 
a  future  recompense  of  good  deeds,  and  in  the  punishment 
hereafter  of  evil  deeds;  in  the  perpetual  state  of  paradise 
for  the  good  and  in  the  annihilation  of  hell,  of  the  Evil  One, 
and  of  all  the  evil  demons.  I  believe  that  Ormuzd  will  at 
last  be  victorious  and  that  Ahriman  will  perish,  together  with 
all  the  off-shoots  of  darkness.  All  that  I  ought  to  have 
thought  and  have  not  thought,  all  that  I  ought  to  have  said 
and  have  not  said,  all  that  I  ought  to  have  done  and  have 
not  done,  all  that  I  ought  to  have  commanded  others  to  do 


392  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  have  not  commanded,  and  all  that  I  ought  not  to  have' 
thought  and  yet  have  thought,  all  that  I  ought  not  to  have 
said  and  yet  have  said,  all  that  I  ought  not  to  have  done  and 
yet  have  done,  all  that  I  ought  not  to  have  commanded  and 
yet  have  commanded  —  for  every  thought,  word,  and  deed, 
whether  of  the  body  or  of  the  spirit,  whether  of  earth  or  of 
heaven,  I  pray  for  forgiveness  and  repent  of  every  sin  with 
this  Patet  (repentance  prayer)." 

In  the  Chapter  of  Admonitions,  the  Zoroastrian  is  enjoined 
to  let  his  light  shine  "  in  the  name  and  love  of  the  Lord." 
How  practical,  not  mystical,  these  admonitions  are,  appears 
from  the  command :  "  Shine  ever  with  the  true  light ;  in- 
crease in  wealth  and  in  goodness;  learn  purity;  be  worthy 
of  praise ;  think  good  thoughts ;  speak  good  words ;  do  good 
deeds ;  be  true  to  the  Wise  Spirit,  obedient  to  the  law,  mod- 
est, kind,  not  cruel,  not  wrathful,  not  shameful,  not  covet- 
ous, not  malicious,  not  envious,  not  haughty,  not  despiteful, 
not  lustful.  Do  not  steal.  Do  not  rob  others  of  their  wives. 
Do  good.  Have  no  agreement  with  a  wicked  man.  Combat 
evil  with  righteousness ;  speak  decently  in  assemblies  of  men 
and  modestly  before  kings;  displease  not  thy  mother;  be 
just;  be  pure;  and  may  all  the  archangels  send  thee  good 
thought,  speech,  and  deed,  wisdom,  sweetness,  prosperity, 
and  f  ruitf  ulness."  The  form  is  late,  the  thought  is  old ;  the 
essence  of  Zoroaster's  religion  is  in  these  words. 

In  accordance  with  the  view  of  most  races,  the  Aryans 
all  had  the  conviction  that  man  existed  after  death.  But 
the  Iranians  added  to  this  simple  conception  various  modi- 
fications, not  entirely  their  own,  since  others  also  had  the 
same,  but,  as  far  as  we  can  tell,  self-invented  and  due  wholly 
to  Iranian  thought. 

What  we  call  soul  is  sub-divided  into  many  different  ele- 
ments. It  is  recognized  that  after  death  the  body  passes 
away,  is  burned  or  swept  off  by  a  flood,  but  nothing  destroys 
the  man's  soul.  His  spirit,  Ahu,  his  thinking  conscience, 
Daena,  his  intelligence,  Baoda,  his  soul,  Urvan,  and  his 
genius,  Fravashi,  abide.  These  are  not  all  the  elements  of 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       393 

the  soul,  since  there  are  others  like  these  or  synonymous 
with  them,  such  as  tavishi,  power;  but  the  point  of  special 
importance  is  that  all  these  parts  of  the  soul  are  personal, 
individual,  separate  from  each  other.  They  are  in  short 
personified  faculties,  and  it  is  not  important  whether  they 
include  wisdom  in  one  form  or  in  two,  as  innate  and  ac- 
quired, or  take  in  or  leave  out  thought,  wish,  word,  and 
other  factors.  In  brief,  the  constituents  are  sometimes  as 
many  as  eleven ;  but  of  these  the  factors  first  mentioned 
are  the  commonest  and  those  without  which  no  one  can  be 
imagined  by  a  Persian.  The  Fravashi,  which  is  "  like  a 
well-winged  bird,"  is  the  genius  or  the  idea-soul  that  existed 
originally  in  the  mind  of  God,  and  it  corresponds  to  the  per- 
sonality of  the  Egyptian  Ka,  except  that  it  is  not  material ; 
but  on  the  other  hand  it  is  like  the  ancestral,  also  winged, 
spirit  of  the  Hindu.  There  is  no  borrowing  here  from 
Egypt,  for  in  the  Egyptian  belief  it  is  the  Ba  soul  which  has 
wings  and  in  Persia  the  idea  of  the  Ba  is  represented 
rather  by  the  Urvan,  that  is  the  soul  that  wills.  In  Egypt 
it  is  the  Ab  or  heart  which  meets  a  man  after  death  and 
accuses  him  of  wrong,  but  in  the  Zoroastrian  faith  the 
Conscience,  Daena,  does  this.  The  man  dies,  but  his  will 
and  conscience  and  guardian  genius  continue  to  exist.  His 
conscience  meets  him  on  the  third  day  after  death,  in  the 
form  of  a  fair  maid  or  a  foul  hag,  and  as  his  conscience 
accuses  or  acquits  him,  so  he  fares  forth  into  the  world  of 
spirits,  accompanied  by  pleasant  or  unpleasant  surroundings, 
till  the  soul's  deeds  are  weighed  in  the  balance,  and  it  is  sent 
to  heaven  or  hell  or  purgatory.  Such  in  brief  is  the  out- 
line of  what  the  soul  has  to  expect.  The  gods  who  act  as 
judges  of  the  soul  may  be  a  later  improvement  on  the  bal- 
ance-idea, and  it  is  possible  that  still  earlier  the  Bridge  of 
Separation  itself  acted  as  a  sort  of  balance  or  at  least  acted 
automatically.  It  would  then  be  a  parallel  to  the  log  over 
which  the  American  Indian  has  to  cross  to  get  to  the 
Happy  Hunting  Grounds.  If  an  Indian  has  been  brave 
(virtuous,  according  to  Redskin  morality),  the  log  lets  him 


394  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

over,  but  otherwise  he  cannot  pass  over  it  but  slips  into 
the  foul  swamp  beneath,  never  to  emerge.  So  possibly  the 
Cinvat  Bridge  turned  down  the  sinner  and  let  the  good  go 
by,  irrespective  of  a  judge,  being  itself  the  automatic  bal- 
ance, while  the  later  belief  represented  its  narrowing  to  a 
razor's  edge  as  a  result  of  the  judgment.  When  the  bridge 
is  first  mentioned,  there  is  nothing  said  of  a  judgment  at 
the  bridge,  perhaps  the  rainbow  or  Milky  Way;  it  was  but 
a  passage  to  heaven.  The  soul  that  was  allowed  to  pass  it 
entered  felicity  and  waited  in  heaven  for  the  final  judgment 
with  the  coming  of  the  saviour.  The  balance  of  later  be- 
lief is  a  pair  of  scales  held  in  the  hands.  But  the  original 
judgment  was  the  one  at  the  world's  end;  no  sentence  was 
pronounced  at  first  by  Mithra  and  the  other  judges,  nor  were 
the  soul's  deeds  weighed,  but  Ormuzd  alone  judged  it  at  the 
last  day. 

The  soul  wills.  On  the  choice  of  this  willing  soul,  the 
Urvan,  depends  the  fate  of  the  man.  Animals  also  have 
a  measure  of  free-will.  The  author  of  the  thirty-first 
Yasna  tries  to  determine  why  some  animals  are  good  and 
some  are  evil.  Ormuzd  has  not  only  determined  the  right 
path  for  the  cow,  but  also  granted  it  some  freedom  of  will 
in  following  that  path.  Man,  weak  and  wavering  between 
good  and  ill,  is  watched  by  the  gods  and  finally  brought  to 
account.  Ormuzd  is  here  the  "  father  of  the  Good  Mind, 
the  founder  of  Asha "  (righteousness);  he  "opened  the 
way  for  the  cow,  whether  to  leave  the  husbandman  or  not," 
yet  "  chose  for  her  the  husbandman  " ;  but  for  man  Ormuzd 
"  in  the  beginning  formed  his  being  and  conscience  and  in- 
telligence .  .  .  and  gave  him  works  and  words,  whereby  he 
might  freely  express  his  belief." 

The  soul's  journey  after  death  is  described  in  Yasht  22 
and  24.  Met  by  its  own  conscience  the  soul  is  heard  and 
judged  by  Mithra,  Sraosha,  and  Rashnu,  and  then,  if  pure, 
passes  the  bridge  over  hell  and  through  the  worlds  of  good 
thought,  word,  and  deed  (stars,  moon,  and  sun),  and  gets 
at  last  to  the  sphere  of  eternal  light,  where  dwells  Ormuzd 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        395 

in  peace.  Just  opposite,  as  far  below,  the  sinners  who  fall 
from  the  bridge  dwell  in  nethermost  hell,  where,  though 
crowded  thickly  together,  each  lost  soul  thinks  he  is  alone. 
Darkness,  cold,  and  stenches  characterize  this  '*  home  of  the 
Lie."  But  those  who  have  done  neither  better  nor  worse 
go  to  the  spot  called  "  equilibrium,"  Hamestakan,  possibly 
known,  as  a  sort  of  mild  purgatory,  as  early  as  the  Gathas. 
The  suffering  here  is  slight,  being  only  the  change  from 
cold  to  heat,  inclement  cold  and  burdensome  heat  following 
one  after  the  other.  It  is  between  the  earth  and  the  stars. 
Still  later,  this  purgatory  has  two  compartments,  one  for 
those  who  are  a  little  better  than  bad,  and  one  for  those 
a  little  worse  than  good,  but  this  is  too  refined  for  the  orig- 
inal idea,  which  simply  provides  for  those  who  are  not  good 
enough  to  go  to  heaven  or  bad  enough  for  hell.  The  whole 
theory,  however,  of  Hamestakan  may  be  derived  from 
Christian  sources,  as  the  description  of  it  is  given  in  texts 
recognizing  Jews  and  Christians.1 

But  hell  is  not  eternal.  When,  born  of  the  seed  of  Zo- 
roaster, miraculously  preserved,  the  saviour,  Saoshyant, 
Astvat-ereta,  appears,  at  the  end  of  time  limited  and  the 
beginning  of  time  unlimited,  he  first  raises  the  dead  bones 
that  have  been  awaiting  his  coming  and  then  each  good 
soul  is  reclothed  with  his  old  garment  of  flesh.  Therefore 
this  is  called  the  "freshening"  time,  frashokarate  (Yasna 
62,  3),  explained  in  the  Vendidad  (18,  51)  as  the  day  when 
the  word  incarnate  in  man  shall  be  given  up  by  the  angel 
of  the  Earth  at  the  day  of  the  resurrection,  and  the  Fra- 
vashis  shall  cease  to  revolve  in  their  sphere  (Yasht  13,  58). 
Saoshyar  is  not  the  first  prophet.  The  last  Age,  of  3,000 
years,  is  that  of  Zoroaster  and  the  two  predecessors  of 
Saoshyant,  Hushedar  or  Aushetar  (Oshedar)  and  Hus- 
hedar-mah  or  Aushetarmah  (Oshadarmah).  Each  is  born 

1  In  Yasna  33,  I,  it  is  said:  "Deeds  most  just  will  he  do  toward 
the  wicked,  as  toward  the  righteous,  and  toward  him  whose  deeds 
of  deceit  and  righteous  deeds  combine  (in  equal  measure)."  Yet 
the  last  part  may  be  differently  interpreted,  so  that  this  early  refer- 
ence to  purgatory  would  fail. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

of  a  pure  maiden  by  immaculate  conception  1  after  she  has 
bathed  in  the  sacred  lake.  For  the  Messianic  idea,  the  most 
important  passage  is  the  Bundahish  30,  a  work  composed 
long  after  the  Christian  era  but  supposed  to  revert  to  a  lost 
Avestan  text.  With  the  coming  of  this  saviour  comes  the 
end  of  the  Kingdom  of  the  Evil  One,  who  is  burned  in 
molten  metal,  which  will  overpour  the  whole  world.  But 
to  the  good  this  will  seem  like  warm  milk,  while  it  will  de- 
stroy the  evil.  Hell  is  thus  purified  and  the  world  is  then 
renewed  and  made  immortal.  Friend  will  know  friend 
again  and  families  recognize  each  other  and  rejoice  for 
ever  in  happiness.  The  purification  will  not  be  instanta- 
neous but  will  last  for  fifty-seven  years  and  there  will  be 
fifteen  men  and  fifteen  maids  who  will  help  in  the  great 
task.  In  some  texts,  the  saviour  is  Zoroaster  himself  re- 
born. 

An  earlier  view  of  the  future  life  may  be  represented  in 
the  story  of  the  Earthly  Paradise.  Hindu  and  Iranian 
know  Yama  or  Yima  as  the  first  man  (Jemshid  of  Persian 
legend),  who  is  here  fitted  into  the  scheme  of  things  as  one 
urged  at  first  to  take  upon  himself  the  task  later  assumed 
by  Zoroaster,  but  he  is  not  spiritual  enough,  or  is  cajoled 
by  evil  spirits,  and  feeds  the  faithful  with  beef,  perhaps 
to  make  mortals  immortal.  He  is  then  commissioned  to 
build  an  enclosure,  vara,  where  men  may  grow  up  secure 
from  the  Evil  One,  who  is  already  awake  and  eager  to  tempt 
men  to  his  side.  The  first  conception  is  that  of  a  past  para- 
dise on  earth ;  it  may  be  that  it  also  implied  a  future  para- 
dise, which  afterwards  becomes  incongruous  with  orthodox 
eschatology.  Yima  received  from  Ormuzd  the  ring  and 
dagger  of  authority  and  ruled  for  three  hundred  winters; 
he  prayed  earth  to  "  increase  a  third  "  and  again  to  increase 
a  third,  during  nine  hundred  years.  Then  there  was  a  meet- 
ing of  the  gods  called  by  Ormuzd  in  Airyana  Vaeja  and  a 

1The  "glory"  which  fills  the  expected  mother  of  the  coming 
saviour  also  fills  the  archangels  who  restore  the  world.  This 
"glory"  plays  a  great  role  in  Mithraism  (see  below). 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        397 

meeting  of  mortals  called  by  Yima.  Then  Ormuzd  told 
Yima  that  fatal  winters  and  snow  were  coming;  he  should 
build  an  enclosure  and  in  it  place  the  seeds  of  living  things ; 
there  sweet  water  will  flow  and  birds  sing,  and  food  never 
fail.  And  Yima  brought  there  the  seeds  of  the  best,  men, 
cattle,  and  trees,  two  of  each  kind;  and  there  was  no  im- 
potent person  there,  nor  poverty,  nor  meanness ;  he  brought 
in  all  a  thousand  and  three  hundred  and  six  hundred  seeds, 
to  the  various  squares  and  streets  of  the  enclosure;  and 
stamped  upon  the  earth  and  kneaded  it  with  his  hands  and 
sealed  the  enclosure  and  set  a  window  in  it  (so  much  is 
obviously  of  the  past).  And  there  a  year  is  as  a  day  and 
there  are  lights  created  and  uncreated.  And  once  in  forty 
years  are  born  a  male  and  female  to  every  couple;  and 
there  men  live  the  happiest  life;  and  there  is  neither  cold 
nor  heat  nor  death  (this  indicates  a  present  paradise). 
Later  views  made  this  paradise  impossible;  it  was  neces- 
sary to  get  the  blessed  out,  so  they  were  given  only  a  life 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  years.  The  commentary,  where 
the  text  says  that  winters  will  come,  has  markush,  rain, 
which  is  an  attempt  to  identify  the  legend  with  the  Biblical 
deluge  story.  Malkosh  (Hebrew  rain)  thus  introduced  be- 
comes a  demon  of  storm  and  rain.  This  element  and  the 
belief  in  a  future  deluge  are  found  only  in  later  texts.  In 
India,  Yama's  home  is  first  a  paradise  in  the  sky  and  then 
a  home  on  earth  where  the  wicked  are  punished;  but  even 
in  this  later  conception  the  palace  of  Yama  himself  is  a 
delightful  place.  Usener  regards  Yima  as  a  future  re- 
newer  of  earth.  Whether  this  legend  and  other  Persian 
views  of  a  future  life  affected  Christian  ideas  is  matter  of 
dispute.  Although  the  later  view  of  the  divisions  of  time 
is  not  known  even  to  the  Vendidad,  yet  there  was  an  early 
belief  in  a  spiritual  creation,  of  which  .the  late  view  is  an 
outgrowth.  According  to  it,  limited  time  is  divided  into 
four  periods  of  three  thousand  years  each,  during  the  first 
o*  which  Ormuzd  strikes  down  Ahriman  with  the  holy 
word.  In  the  second  period  Ormuzd  makes  the  world,  as- 


398  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

sisted  by  the  good  spirits,  and  in  the  third,  Ahriman,  as  a 
serpent  with  his  paramour  Lust,  afflicts  creation  with  evil, 
but  at  last  he  is  driven  back  and  heaven  is  walled  in,  while 
the  prototypes  of  men  and  animals  die  comforted  in  the 
hope  of  the  coming  of  Zoroaster.1  Yima  is  now  born  and 
at  last  Zoroaster  appears.  The  last  period  begins  with 
Zoroaster. 

This  fourth  period  continues  till  the  judgment  day  at  the 
end  of  the  twelve  thousand  years.  This  part  of  the  theory 
of  cycles  is  known  before  the  Sassanian  period  (c.  third 
century  A.  D.).  Later  belief  also  imagines  a  cosmic  egg  and 
a  three-fold  heaven ;  it  also  makes  Ormuzd  "  create  the 
world  out  of  nothing  "  during  six  periods  of  a  year  each, 
probably  in  imitation  of  Genesis.  The  seven  zones  as  sub- 
divisions of  the  earth  thus  created  are  of  an  older  period 
(compare  the  seven  continents  of  the  Hindus).  The  ques- 
tion of  time  occupied  philosophical  thought  in  the  later 
period  and  caused  two  heresies  to  arise,  one  that  of  the 
Zervanites  and  one  that  of  the  Gayomarts.  The  former 
maintained  that  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman  were  antithetic  forms 
of  Time  or  Fate  as  divine  (God)  ;  the  latter,  that  Ahriman 
was  born  in  a  moment  of  weakness  of  Ormuzd.  These 
philosophical  speculations,  however,  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  religion  of  Zoroaster;  they  are  late  attempts  to  explain 
the  relation  of  temporal  to  absolute  time.  The  Zervanite 
position  is  interesting  because  of  parallel  explanations  in 
other  philosophies  and  the  Gayomart  position  because  of 
its  uniqueness. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  second  period  of  the  religion,  rep- 
resented in  the  Yasna  not  attributable  to  Zoroaster,  shows 
already  a  recrudescence  of  nature  worship,  though  the 

1  These  prototypes  are  called  Gayomart  and  Goshurvan,  against 
whom  the  Evil  One  sets  Death,  the  "  bone-disperser."  Out  of 
these  arise  the  future  men  and  cattle,  men  in  particular  appearing 
first  in  plant-form,  whose  two  branches  are  brother  and  sister, 
parents  of  twins  from  whom  come  seven  pairs,  as  ancestors  of 
present  human  beings.  Human  monsters  come  from  another  sprout 
of  Gayomart's  seed. 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        399 

adoration  paid  to  natural  objects,  sun,  stars,  moon-plant, 
etc.,  is  carefully  subordinated  to  that  of  the  Lord.  Yet  it 
is  still  a  fresh  vivid  religion,  without  that  substitution  of 
creed  and  cult  for  feeling  and  faith  which  marks  the  later 
aspects  of  Zoroastrianism.  But  in  the  period  now  to  be  dis- 
cussed, represented  by  the  latest  scriptures,  formalism  re- 
places fervour.  Such  is  apt  to  be  the  case  in  every  religion, 
and  the  higher  the  religion  the  more  prone  is  it  to  suffer  a 
lowering  of  ideals.  This  is  because  its  original  greatness 
is  due  to  the  intensity  of  the  primitive  faith;  the  more 
intense  this  is,  the  harder  is  it  to  maintain.  Decadence  is 
inevitable;  it  is  only  in  the  manner  of  decadence  that  dis- 
tinctions occur.  The  first  glow  may  pale  out  in  indiffer- 
ence and  the  religion  merge  with  a  faith  at  first  alien  to  it; 
or  the  later  religion  may  exaggerate  certain  factors  which 
make  for  deterioration,  such  as  the  mystical  or  sensuous  ele- 
ment; or  it  may  preserve  its  features  and  lose  its  soul. 
In  Zoroastrianism  there  arose  an  exaggeration  of  formal- 
ism based  on  fear  of  the  impure,  the  evil  with  which  man 
is  ever  in  contact.  The  dread  of  this  overpowered  the 
spirit  of  the  old  belief.  The  evil  in  the  world  is  not  now 
so  much  the  Lie  as  it  is  the  unclean.  The  ideal  of  Truth 
as  righteousness  becomes  an  ideal  of  purity.  In  the 
establishment  of  a  scheme  of  life  for  the  avoidance  of  im- 
purity there  is  little  room  for  religion,  but  a  great  oppor- 
tunity for  religionism.  Zoroaster  was  content  to  laud  cows 
and  dogs  as  animals  useful  to  the  work  of  civilization,  right 
order ;  but  the  later  Zoroastrian  began  to  worry  about  other 
animals.  Where,  for  example,  was  he  to  place  animals  not 
mentioned  by  Zoroaster?  Scorpions  and  snakes,  he  ap- 
pears to  think,  are  clearly  the  work  of  the  Evil  One;  but 
how  about  the  peacock,  the  hawk,  and  the  domestic  cock? 
Can  we  be  really  religious  unless  we  settle  the  status  of  these 
creatures  ?  The  cock  must  be  got  into  the  scheme  of  things 
or  religion  will  go  astray.  This  meticulous  scrupulosity 
begins  to  occupy  the  believer's  mind ;  one  point  becomes  as 
important  as  another;  physical  and  moral  values  are  con- 


400  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

fused;  bodily  purity  is  exalted  as  much  as  spiritual  purity, 
till  the  spirit  of  Zoroaster  evaporates  in  the  dry-rot  of 
ritualism.  His  fervid  faith  fades  into  formulas  for  the 
preservation  of  corporal  soundness.  Of  course  the  cock, 
which  hails  the  light  of  morn  and  is  awakened  by  Faith,  in 
order  that  it  in  turn  may  awaken  men  to  renew  the  fight 
against  evil,  may  be  discussed  and  its  status  determined 
with  no  great  demoralization  of  the  faith;  but  the  discus- 
sion is  symptomatic.  Still  more  .  so  are  the  minute  rules 
regarding  purity.  In  the  first  form  of  the  religion,  purity 
was  not  very  important.  Ormuzd  is  not  chiefly  the  pure 
but  the  Wise  and  Holy  (Bountiful)  Spirit;  the  shibboleth 
ashem  vohu  valmhtem  means  first  "  Truth  (or  Right)  is  the 
best  good  " ;  later  "  Purity  is  the  best  good,"  right  being 
truth  or  righteousness  and  this  last  becoming  purity.  In 
the  Persian  form  this  is  perfectly  clear.  The  Lie,  the  old 
original  evil  demon,  is  here  the  foe  of  order  and  the  king 
lives  according  to  right :  "  Thus  says  Darius  the  king, 
Those  countries  which  became  rebellious,  the  Lie  made  them 
rebellious,  so  that  they  deceived  the  people,  but  Ormuzd 
delivered  them  into  my  hand.  Thus  says  Darius  the  king, 
Thou  who  shalt  be  king  hereafter,  be  ever  on  thy  guard 
against  the  Lie.  What  I  have  done  I  have  done  by  the 
grace  of  Ormuzd  .  .  .  Ormuzd  and  the  other  gods  that 
exist  brought  me  aid  because  I  was  not  hostile,  nor  a  liar, 
nor  a  wrong-doer,  neither  I  nor  my  family,  but  according 
to  the  right  (righteousness)  have  I  ruled."  The  dualism 
of  the  Gathas  and  of  the  Persian  kings  is  that  of  truth 
versus  untruth  (dushivara,  deceit,  or  drauga,  lie).  The 
right  order,  of  the  state  as  well  as  of  heaven  and  the  soul, 
depends  on  truth.  Zoroaster  was  an  economist,  the  min- 
ister of  a  king,  and  had  in  mind  the  orderliness  of  the  state ; 
hence  he  lauds  cattle  and  agriculture,  as  against  nomadic 
life.  To  speak  the  truth,  plough  the  land,  and  tend  cattle 
are  his  highest  virtues.  The  Vendidad  on  the  other  hand, 
while  it-  lauds  all  these,  teaches  that  it  is  as  sinful  to  remain 
contaminated  by  touching  something  impure  as  it  is  vir- 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       4OI 

tuous  to  speak  the  truth.  All  this  may  be  due  to  the  Magi ; 
it  is,  in  any  event,  a  priestly  interpretation. 

The  later  Zoroastrian  of  the  Vendidad  lived  apparently 
in  constant  fear  of  becoming  impure ;  he  lived  also  under 
a  scheme  of  life  which  regulated  his  whole  existence.  Pious 
and  perturbed,  he  was  ever  asking  what  he  was  to  do  in 
case  he  came  in  contact  with  the  smell  of  a  corpse  ten  feet 
away ;  and  when  he  was  answered,  asked  again  what  he 
should  do  if  he  stood  a  hundred  feet  away.  How  many 
blows,  he  asks,  will  remove  the  sin  of  a  man  who  breaks 
another's  bones,  for  the  first  time,  and  again  for  the 
second  time?  How  many  years  must  a  man  remain  in 
hell  if  he  breaks  his  contract  concerning  a  sheep,  how  many 
in  case  he  breaks  a  contract  concerning  an  ox  ?  Is  the  man 
himself  or  are  his  relatives,  and  if  so  how  many,  implicated 
in  this  breaking  of  a  contract?  *•  And,  with  a  new  idea,  to 
how  many  generations  are  the  sins  of  the  father  visited 
upon  his  children?  In  how  many  places  does  holy  Earth, 
if  contaminated,  feel  herself  aggrieved  and  in  which  places 
does  she  feel  most  aggrieved?  When  one  has  touched  a 
corpse,  must  one  wash  oneself  fifteen  or  thirty  times?  The 
Vendidad's  letter  is  its  spirit ;  it  is  expressed  in  one  phrase : 
"  Next  to  life,  purity  is  man's  greatest  good " ;  but  the 
purity  here  meant  is  that  of  purification  effected  by  pun- 
ishment enjoined  by  the  Ratu  or  priest  for  violation  of 
rules.  The  passion  of  Zoroaster  is  now  converted  into  a 
schedule  of  offences  and  expiations. 

This  fall  from  religion  to  law  and  ritual  is  embodied  in 
two  prayers.  The  earlier  is  the  prayer  of  Zoroaster: 
"  The  will  of  the  Lord  is  the  law  of  righteousness."  The 
later  Zoroastrian  substitutes  for  this  prayer,  the  Honover, 
the  prayer:  "  Teach  me  the  rules  (of  purification)  for  this 
world  and  the  next."  The  natural  concomitant  of  this 
tendency  is  the  stress  laid  on  vain  repetitions.  Thus  in  the 
Ormuzd  Yasht  it  is  said  that  if  one  pronounces  the  differ- 

1Here  at  least  is  one  sensible  question;  typical  of  the  mixture  of 
ritual  and  law. 


402  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ent  names  and  titles  of  Ormuzd,  one  will  be  protected  on  all 
sides  from  every  form  of  evil.1 

At  this  point  it  will  be  necessary  to  speak  of  the  tradition 
which  connects  Zoroaster  with  the  organized  priesthood  of 
the  Magi,  who,  according  to  Herodotus  (i.  101),  were  a 
war-like  tribe  of  Medes,  the  names  of  whose  early  kings 
may  be  corruptions  of  Zoroastrian  conceptions  (Phraortes 
as  Fravashi).  We  may  well  suppose  that  the  degradation 
of  the  religion  into  the  petty  scheme  of  penances  in  the 
Vendidad  reverts  to  a  priesthood,  not  to  the  founder.  The 
Magi  appear  to  have  adopted  Zoroastrianism  and  of  course 
Zoroaster  is  said  to  have  been  one  of  them.  Possibly  they 
have  affected  the  cult  in  some  particulars  and  as  priests  of 
the  religion  they  may  have  been  most  instrumental  in  lower- 
ing its  tone.  But  all  this  is  matter  of  speculation  and  recent 
theories  of  the  influence  of  the  Magi  in  Zoroastrianism 
based  on  the  foreign  character  of  these  priests  are  not  con- 
vincing.2 The  Magi  were  presumably  Medes  who  assimi- 
lated the  more  or  less  alien  (Bactrian)  Zoroastrian  faith 
and  became  its  representatives  and  priests;  yet  alien  not 
so  much  in  race  as  in  spirit.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
Zoroastrians  of  a  later  day  were  as  a  body  alienated  in  spirit 

1  These  titles  are  not  strictly   repetitions:     Bestower   of   health, 
holy,   glorious,   protector,   creator,   king-ruling-by-his-own-will,   he- 
who-does-not-deceive,  he-who-is-not-deceived,  weal,  master  of  weal, 
beneficent,   energetic,   great,   wise,   light,   source   of    light,    wisdom, 
intellect,    brilliant,    majestic,    best,    most    beautiful.     Compare    the 
Mohammedan  titles  of  God. 

2  Professor  Moulton  in  his  Early  Zoroastrianism,  London,  1913, 
argues  that  the  Magi  were  non-Aryan  Shamans,  originally  a  slave 
population  (servant  class?),  against  whom  Zoroaster  at  first  warred. 
Being   neither    Aryan    nor    Semitic,    they   altered    or    rejected    the 
teaching  which   they  did   not  understand.     Exposure   of   the   dead 
also  is  due  to  this  source  in  Professor  Moulton's  opinion,  though 
this  is  a  Vedic  (Aryan)  custom.    The  Persians  buried  their  dead,  a 
practice  denounced  in  the  Vendidad;  but  in  the  time  of  the  Achae- 
menides  the  later  Zoroastrian  view  may  not  have  been  prevalent, 
or  perhaps  was  not  yet  arisen.    Other  Magian  practices  too  may 
have  been   reassertions  of  old  customs.     Another   suggestion  made 
by  Professor  Moulton  is  that  a  Gaotema  mentioned  in  the  Yashts 
is  Gautama  Buddha,  but  no  proof  of  such  an  extraordinary  view 
is  given. 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM 

from  the  founder,  just  as  many  later  Buddhists  and  Chris- 
tians were  no  true  disciples  of  their  masters,  not  be- 
cause they  differed  racially  but  because  they  differed  men- 
tally and  spiritually.  In  sum,  the  Magi,  so  far  as  we  know, 
are  an  inherent  part  of  the  later  religious  body,  who  repre- 
sented it  to  the  ancient  world,  probably  not  without  reason. 
How  old  a  constituent  of  that  body  they  are,  we  know  not. 
They  do  not  appear  in  the  Gathas  and,  though  their  absence 
there  is  not  conclusive,  in  all  probability  Zoroaster  had  no 
such  priests.  In  the  Yashts  they  are  once  mentioned,  but 
not  in  a  passage  above  suspicion,  and  it  may  be  that  they 
were  not  active  till  the  fourth  century  B.  c.,  about  the  time 
the  Vendidad  was  written. 

Another  legend  of  the  Vendidad,  from  which  comes  the 
story  of  Yima,  is  that  of  the  temptation  of  Zoroaster.  This 
resembles  the  temptation-scenes  in  the  life  of  Christ  and 
Buddha,  with  which,  indeed,  as  explained  below,  it  may  be 
historically  connected. 

The  Evil  One,  Ahriman,  first  tries  to  kill  the  prophet 
and  then  to  make  him  give  up  his  plan  of  destroying  the 
demons  and  Nasu.  "  Do  not  destroy  my  creatures,  O  holy 
Zoroaster.  Renounce  the  good  law  of  the  worshippers  of 
Mazda  and  thou  shalt  gain  the  lordship  of  the  whole  world." 
But  Zoroaster  replies :  "  Never  will  I  renounce  the  good 
law,  though  my  body,  my  life,  and  my  soul  should  be  dis- 
banded." Then  said  again  to  him  the  Evil  One :  "  By 
whose  word  wilt  thou  strike  and  repel  the  demons;  by 
whose  weapon  will  the  good  creatures  repel  my  creatures  ?  " 
And  Zoroaster  answered:  "The  word  of  God  shall  be  the 
weapon ;  the  word  taught  me  by  the  Wise  Spirit.  By  his 
word  will  I  strike,  by  his  word  will  I  repel  the  vile  daevas. 
Spenta  Mainyu,  the  good  spirit,  gave  it  me ;  the  archangels 
gave  it  me ;  and  by  that  word  will  I  destroy  the  evil  ones." 
And  the  prophet  then  uttered  the  prayer  ever  since  repeated 
by  the  saints  of  his  religion :  "  The  will  of  the  Lord  is  the 
law  of  righteousness.  The  gifts  of  the  Good  Mind  are  for 
him  who  works  in  this  world  for  the  Wise  Spirit  and  wields, 
according  to  the  will  of  Ahura,  the  power  given  to  him  to 


404  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

help  the  poor  "  (the  Honover  prayer).  And  the  evil  daevas 
fled,  casting  the  evil  eye,  the  wicked  daevas  that  do  evil, 
saying:  "Let  us  gather  together  at  the  gate  of  hell  (the 
head  of  Arezura),  for  he,  the  holy  Zoroaster,  is  born.  How 
can  we  slay  him  ?  For  he  is  the  stroke  that  fells  the  fiends." 
The  general  scheme  of  church  organization  is  simple  in 
Zoroastrianism.  The  adoration  of  Fire  holds  the  first 
place.  But  Fire  is  not  a  mere  natural  power:  "I  sacri- 
fice to  thee,  Fire,  son  of  Ormuzd,  and  to  all  fires  and  all 
waters  and  to  all  plants,  for  they  are  all  made  by  God." 
The  cult  eventually  became  a  worship  of  Fire  as  representa- 
tive of  all  that  is  holy  and  pure.  The  ordinary  sacrifice 
was  a  libation  of  milk  and  horn  and  a  meat-offering.  The 
priest  was  not  an  hereditary  officer;  he  went  from  house  to 
house  to  offer  sacrifice  and  also  executed  legal  punishments. 
The  Ratu  or  Raspi  was  the  guardian  of  the  young,  an  as- 
sistant to  the  chief  priest,  Zaotar.  The  priests  had  no  po- 
litical power  before  the  Sassanian  period,  when  a  hierarchy 
was  established.  Altogether  it  was  a  simple  and  devout 
congregation,  hampered  less  by  priestly  ambition  than  by 
pious  scrupulosity.  The  painful  mysteries  of  Mithraism 
seem,  however,  to  have  begun  early,  since  in  the  Mihr  Yasht 
thirty  stripes  purge  from  sin;  but  fines  might  take  the 
place  of  strokes.  Death,  menstruation,  and  childbirth  were 
the  greatest  sources  of  impurity.  At  death  the  "  devil- 
averting"  dog  must  stand  beside  the  dying.  Purification, 
washing  of  oneself  and  vessels,  fasting,  and  penance  were 
means  of  ridding  oneself  of  evil.  Sacrifice  was  made  to 
stars  and  to  Mithra.  To  Ursa  maior,  for  example,  because 
this  star-group  kept  off  Pairikasv;  to  Sirius,  because  it  kept 
off  drought,  and  "  is  most  beneficent  when  worshipped  with 
sacrifice  and  propitiated."  Ormuzd  is  represented  as  say- 
ing of  Sirius :  "  I  have  created  that  star  as  worthy  of 
sacrifice,  as  worthy  of  prayer,  as  worthy  of  propitiation  as 
myself"  (Tir  Yasht).  The  language  used  of  Mithra  is 
of  the  same  sort  and  prepares  us  for  the  later  rise  of  Mith- 
raism. 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       4°5 

As  compared  with  other  religions,  Zoroastrianism  is  more 
ritualistic  than  Confucianism;  more  spiritual  than  Baby- 
lonian religion;  more  practical  and  less  speculative  than 
Hinduism.  It  is  a  sect,  not  a  national  religion,  drawing  its 
adherents  from  all  who  are  religiously  minded.  Its  rise 
was  in  great  part  due  to  conversion  by  conquest  and  it 
throve  only  under  political  support. 

The  historical  connexion  between  the  Persian  and  Chris- 
tian faiths  is  evident  in  one  point,  the  heptarchy  of  angels, 
and  may  be  suspected  in  others.  Raphael,  the  healer,  pre- 
sents prayers  and  heals  earth  when  it  is  defiled,  as  Vohu- 
mano  receives  the  suppliants  and  hears  prayers.  Gabriel, 
the  man  of  God,  mentioned  in  Daniel  viii.  16;  ix.  21  and 
Luke  i.  19,  26,  and  Michael,  the  "great  prince  "  and  guard 
of  Israel,  Daniel  x.  13  and  xii.  I,  together  with  Uriel  and 
Azazel  all  belong  to  the  post-exilic  period  and  do  not  seem 
to  have  been  native  Hebrew  creations.  The  seventh  chap- 
ter of  Ezra  shows  that  the  king  of  Persia  was  interested 
in  the  service  of  the  Hebrews  and  it  is  not  a  far  cry  to 
Zoroastrianism  when  we  see  that  the  Hebrews  were  pro- 
tected by  a  Zoroastrian  monarch.  The  whole  theory  of 
guardian  angels,  Matthew  viii.  10,  Acts  xii.  15,  may  be  re- 
ferred to  the  same  source.  Yet  on  the  other  hand,  with  the 
exception  of  Asmodeus,  there  is  no  linguistic  parallel  be- 
tween the  Hebrew  and  Persian  spirits.  Nevertheless,  the 
character  of  such  angels  as  Gabriel  and  Michael  seems 
more  of  Persian  than  of  Babylonian  stamp.  And  when 
we  come  to  the  eschatological  side,  the  influence  of  Persia 
seems  predominant.  We  may  say  that  the  seven  evil  spir- 
its of  Matthew  xii.  45  are  as  well  referred  to  Babylon  as  to 
Persia,  and  Revelations  as  a  whole  may  reflect  either  source, 
but  when  we  turn  to  specific  details,  such  as  the  lake  of 
fire  and  the  thousand  years  of  the  reign  of  the  evil  Azhi 
Dahaka,  we  are  irresistibly  compelled  to  draw  the  parallels 
between  the  Christian  and  Persian  rather  than  Babylonian 
faith.  Even  though  we  grant  that  Babylonian  effect  upon 
Zoroastrianism  was  greater  and  earlier  than  used  to  be  be- 


406  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

lieved,  yet  it  is  not  important  from  the  Christian  point  of 
view  whether  the  influence  came  directly  or  indirectly  from 
Babylon,  but  whether  we  are  to  assume  any  influence  at  all. 
In  Matthew  v.  25  and  28,  the  resurrection  of  the  dead  is  an 
event  soon  to  come.  The  general  doctrine  was  not  confined 
to  Persia,  but  was  known  to  Greece  and  Egypt,  yet,  as  far 
as  Hebrew  belief  goes,  it  is  not  known  in  the  earlier  times ; 
while  it  is  an  essential  belief  of  Zoroastrianism  even  in  the 
earlier  times.  The  hope  of  immortality  expressed  in  the 
Psalms,  xvi.  17;  xlix.  63,  is  a  trait  not  necessarily  drawn 
from  Persia,  but  it  is  significant  that  there  is  no  such  hope 
expressed  till  the  Persian  and  Greek  period.  Under  the 
Sassanians,  on  the  other  hand,  the  influence  of  the  Jewish 
religion  began  to  make  itself  felt  in  Zoroastrianism  (com- 
pare Darmesteter,  une  priere  judeo-persane,  Paris,  1891) 
and  it  is  possible  that  this  happened  earlier;  just  as  it  is 
possible  that  Persian  belief  affected  Babylon  as  well  as 
that  Babylonian  belief  affected  Persia.1  As  early  as  the 
seventh  century  before  Christ  and  perhaps  earlier  the  names 
of  Persian  gods  were  borrowed  by  Assyrians. 

The  notion  of  a  life  after  death  is  one  found  in  many 
religions  and  though  it  is  possible  that  the  idea  of  a  resur- 
rection may  have  been  borrowed,  it  is  not  a  necessary  solu- 
tion. At  any  rate  the  idea  of  the  Jews  was  developed  quite 
independently,  as  it  differs  from  that  of  the  Zoroastrians. 
Nor  does  there  seem  to  be  any  relation  between  the  Bible 
and  the  Avesta  in  the  doctrine  of  retribution  and  the  con- 
ception of  hell,  which  in  the  Jews'  belief  was  a  lake  of 
fire  near  Jerusalem,  while  in  Zoroastrianism  it  was  a  place 
cold  and  malodorous  under  the  whole  earth.  The  closest 
resemblances  to  Christian  belief  are  to  be  found  in  the  Arda 
Viraf,  a  late  work  in  the  vein  of  the  Divina  Comedia  and 
perhaps  influencing  Dante's  description.  In  the  earliest 

1  On  the  relations  between  Babylon  and  Iran,  compare  ZDMG. 
50,  43  (1896).  In  Am.  Jour,  of  Theology,  xxi.  58f.  (1917),  Professor 
Carnoy  seeks  to  prove  that  Varuna  and  Ormuzd  derive  from  a 
Babylonian  prototype,  but  his  argument  is  based  on  what  seems  to 
the  writer  inconclusive  parallelism  (see  above,  p.  346). 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       4°7 

Jewish  belief  there  is  no  general  resurrection,  only  of  the 
just  or  of  some  of  the  dead,  whereas  the  Zoroastrians  held 
to  a  universal  resurrection.  Again,  the  Zoroastrian  belief 
implied  a  cosmic  renewal  of  the  world,  which  was  not  the 
Jewish  idea.  The  Messiah  belief  again  is  not  part  of  earliest 
Zoroastrianism,  certainly  not  of  the  Gathic  belief,  in  which 
hell  is  only  the  "  abode  of  the  worst  mind  "  and  Vohumano 
himself  or  itself  is  heaven  (Gathas  30,  4,  and  32,  15). 

In  the  earliest  texts  the  word  saviour  is  applied  to  the 
pious  man  who  helps  renovate  the  world;  to  the  prince  who 
saves  in  the  same  way ;  and  to  others  who,  like  the  Amesha- 
spentas,  serve  the  good  cause.  It  is  only  in  post-Gathic 
literature  that  the  word  designates  a  special  saviour.  But 
by  the  time  of  the  thirteenth  and  nineteenth  Yasht  the  Mes- 
sianic idea  is  well  known,  as  in  the  Haptanghaiti  the  fire  of 
purification  and  final  judgment  are  recognized.  Yet  no  one 
knows  the  date  of  these  works,  even  approximately.  They 
have  the  character  of  later  works,  as  compared  with  the 
Gathas,  and  that  is  all  we  can  say.  So  we  have  to  rest  with 
this  statement,  that  the  significant  elements  of  the  later 
eschatology  are  unknown  in  the  Gathas,  in  which  there  is 
no  Messiah,  no  assembly  of  the  dead  at  the  last  day,  and  no 
reward  and  punishment  in  heaven  and  hell,  only  a  cosmic 
renewal  of  the  world  and  the  general  notion  of  a  resurrec- 
tion. Whether  there  was  a  bodily  resurrection  recognized 
before  the  time  of  Pahlavi  theology  is  doubtful.  Soeder- 
blom  thinks  that  in  the  Gathas  there  is  nothing  to  prove  or 
disprove  the  idea.  Nevertheless,  we  cannot  ignore  the  fact 
that  Greek  authorities  of  the  fourth  century  B.  c.  (in  all 
probability,  Theopompus  ap.  Plutarch)  recognize  the  Ma- 
gian  belief  in  the  cycles,  in  resurrection,  and  in  purification, 
when  "  Hades "  is  overthrown  and  the  more  and  more 
spiritualized  world  shall  become  happy  in  universal  felicity. 
This  corresponds  to  the  later  Avestan  idea  and  seems  to 
point  to  the  fact  that  even  the  later  Avestan  views  are  older 
than  our  era,  though  a  great  deal  of  the  detailed  lore  of  the 
resurrection  derives  from  texts  such  as  the  Bundahish, 


408  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

which  in  its  present  form  is  as  late  as  the  Mohammedan 
conquest  of  Persia  (651  A.  D.),  and  the  Bahman  Yasht, 
which  is  as  late  as  the  sixth  or  seventh  century.  From 
these  sources  comes  the  completed  Messianic  doctrine,  with 
its  account  of  the  overthrow  of  Azhi  Dahaka  by  Hushedar 
(Hushedar's  millennium  begins  with  the  decline  of  the  Sas- 
sanides)  and  the  second  millennium  of  Hushedarmah,  which 
is  now  in  progress,  culminating  in  the  coming  of  the  sa- 
viour. This  element  in  the  new  theology  made  vital 
changes.  These  were  the  gradual  lessening  of  the  impor- 
tance of  the  work  of  the  pious  worshipper  and  even  of 
Ahura  Mazda  himself  in  comparison  with  the  work  of 
the  saviour.  For  it  is  not  God  but  the  Saoshyant  who  raises 
the  dead  by  giving  them  the  elixir  of  life,  the  flesh  of  the 
sacred  ox  and  the  Horn  juice.  He  toils  for  fifty-seven 
years  to  raise  them  and  they  all  rise,  good  and  bad,  to  be 
purified  and  to  seem  forty  years  of  age  if  they  died  old, 
or  fifteen  if  young;  but,  according  to  another  version,  veg- 
etarians are  resurrected  young  and  the  eaters  of  flesh  as 
of  middle  life.  Owing  to  this  idea  of  universal  purification 
the  old  conception  of  a  judgment  by  burning  metal,  though 
retained,  became  superfluous.  Ahriman  is  the  only  sinner 
destroyed;  even  the  Azhi  Dahaka,  who  eats  up  Satan,  is 
purified  at  last  (Bahman  Yasht,  3,  57).  The  doctrine  of 
the  Gathas,  that  piety  increases  righteousness,  is  also  no 
longer  necessary. 

Darmesteter's  theory,  already  criticized,  refers  Zoroas- 
trianism  to  Greek  and  Christian  influences.  The  exaggera- 
tion is  here  almost  as  great  as  that  of  Mills,  who  thinks 
that  the  Avesta  is  the  source  of  all  Jewish  belief  in  regard 
to  Satan,  the  angels,  and  the  last  judgment.  Philo  is  said 
to  have  been  the  transmitter.  The  general  and  particular 
are  not  sundered  at  all  in  Mills'  review ;  many  parallels  are 
utterly  inept,  such  as  the  stress  laid  on  seven,  as  if  this 
number  had  not  been  Jewish.  Soederblom's  work  is  much 
more  critical.  He  shows,,  what  is  so  constantly  forgotten, 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM       4°9 

that  the  divergencies  are  quite  as  important  as  the  agree- 
ments and  holds  that,  while  there  may  be  a  general  his- 
torical connection  between  Jews  and  Iranians,  there  is  no 
such  close  dependence  as  is  maintained  by  Mills.  The  fig- 
ure of  Satan  and  those  of  the  archangels  as  princes  of 
earth  and  air  are  very  probably  of  Iranian  origin ;  while  the 
temptation  may  have  been  added  to  Zoroastrianism  from 
Christian  sources,  or,  as  a  Christian  story,  drawn  from  Zo- 
roastrianism or,  a  third  possibility,  each  may  have  arisen 
independently.  There  is  still  a  fourth  possibility,  that  both 
western  religions  were  indebted  to  Buddhism.  Unsatisfac- 
tory as  is  this  non-solution,  it  is  at  present  all  that  an  un- 
biassed historian  can  accept.  The  Jewish-Christian  Judg- 
ment is  not  that  of  Zoroastrianism  and  the  general  idea  of  a 
life  hereafter  need  not  be  derived  at  all,  or  it  may  have  had 
any  one  of  many  sources.  The  universal  resurrection,  the 
Bridge,  the  three  judges,  form  no  part  of  the  Jewish  idea, 
while  the  Christian  "  last  trump  "  is  not  Zoroastrian.  In 
a  word,  "  Daniel  was  Zoroaster  "  is  not  historically  possible. 
Edouard  Meyer's  view,  that  both  Persians  and  Jews  drew 
the  ideas  common  to  both  from  Babylon,  lacks  a  basis  of 
fact.  Where  in  Babylon  is  found  a  Satan  or  a  Wise  Spirit 
opposed  to  him,  or  an  eschatology  like  that  of  the  "  bor- 
rowers "  ? 

Satan  is  not  an  early  Jewish  nor  a  Babylonian  concep- 
tion, but  he  is  a  perfect  counterpart  of  Ahriman,  who  in 
turn  grows  naturally  out  of  Zoroaster's  Lie.  The  seven 
archangels  are  inevitable  developments  of  Gathan  thought; 
Asmodeus  is  Aeshma  daeva.  Most  of  the  differences  in 
belief  are  explicable  as  due  to  independent  development 
in  detail.  New  Testament  thought  is  a  residuum  of  for- 
eign and  native  ideas  so  long  combined  as  to  be  at  this  pe- 
riod purely  Jewish;  in  the  Apocalypse  there  might  be  a 
reflection  of  Babylonian  star-cult,  as  in  the  virgin-birth 
and  saviour-deity  there  might  be  a  reflection  of  Zoroastrian 
mythology.  But  might  is  not  must  and  in  view  of  the  great 


410  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

uncertainty  in  regard  to  the  date  of  later  Avestan  texts,  it  is 
probable  that  we  shall  never  know  the  exact  relation  between 
Christian  beliefs  and  Zoroastrian. 

An  eclectic  mystical  combination  of  Zoroastrianism,  Baby- 
lonian belief,  and  Gnostic  Christianity  arose  in  the  third 
century  A.  D.  under  the  name  of  Manicheism ;  it  was  a 
much  needed  reform.  Mani's  chief  argument  against  Zo- 
roastrianism was  that  it  had  become  too  formal.  Not  sac- 
rifice but  prayer  and  instruction  were  needed  in  religious 
life.  He  would  accordingly  free  the  "  light  devoured  by 
matter."  He  appeared  in  242  A.  D.  and  was  executed  after 
many  years'  work  in  the  East.1  Three  hundred  years  later, 
in  the  sixth  century,  another  sect,  that  of  Mazdak,  a  disciple 
of  Mani,  taught  a  socialistic  community  of  goods,  which 
included  even  the  common  possession  of  wives;  but  other- 
wise it  was  ascetic,  the  leader  preaching  the  giving  up  of 
meat  and  pleasure.  The  Mesopotamian  Mandaeans  (manda 
is  gnosis)  also  showed  Persian  Gnostic  elements,  such  as 
worshipping  the  attributes  of  God.  Their  scriptures, 
though  late,  contain  much  older  material.  The  modern 
Guebers  or  Ghebers  are  the  "heretics"  (Kafirs),  as  they 
appeared  to  Mohammedans,  that  is  a  general  term  for  Zo- 
roastrian fire-worshippers.  Under  persecution,  a  remnant 
of  Zoroastrian  believers  settled  in  India  and  are  still  known 
as  Parsis  (Persians).  They  retain  the  faith,  the  best  prac- 
tices, and  the  high  moral  tone  of  their  ancestors. 

But  of  all  the  out-growths  from  Zoroastrianism,  that 
which  emanated  from  the  cult  of  Mithra  was  the  most  im- 
portant. It  was  not,  however,  a  direct  product  of  Zoroas- 
trianism. It  was  rather  an  exaggeration  of  a  cult  which, 
though  maintained  within  the  fold,  was  never  really  Zo- 
roastrian. Mithra,  not  even  mentioned  in  the  Gathas,  ap- 
pears almost  equivalent  to  Ormuzd  as  early  as  the  tenth 

1  Fragments  of  Manichaean  works  have  recently  been  recovered. 
The  system  was  based  on  dualism  and  was  in  full  force  in  western 
Europe  in  the  fourth  century.  Augustine  was  at  first  a  Manichaean. 
Mani  regarded  himself  as  a  reincarnation  of  Christ  and  as  God 
incarnate. 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        411 

Yasht.  Mithra's  cult  is  really  that  of  the  old  Persian  god 
of  light,  popularly  maintained  and  mystically  interpreted. 
Mithra  as  the  kindly  light  of  heaven,  represented,  as  the 
reviving  sun,  the  beneficent  creative  power,  and  as  the 
"  spirit  of  the  middle  sphere  "  he  became  also  a  mediatorial 
god.  The  conception  differs  somewhat  even  in  its  earliest 
form  from  that  of  the  sun-god,  who  in  the  Vedas  appears 
carried  by  seven  steeds,  while  Mithra  is  the  light  that 
brings  the  day  in  a  chariot  drawn  by  four  horses.  Mithra 
is  the  light  celestial,  of  day  or  of  night.  At  night  he 
sees  with  his  hundred  eyes  and  hears  with  his  hundred 
ears,  so  that  he  becomes  the  god  of  truth  and  compacts. 
But  the  sun  as  light  of  heaven  is  also  Mithra,  who  gives 
increase  in  progeny  and  cattle.  As  giver,  too,  he  dispenses 
peace,  wisdom,  and  victory  in  battle,  and  in  this  capacity 
his  companion  is  Verethraghna,  genius  of  victory.  Above 
all  in  giving  victory  he  saves  and  then  as  saviour  he  saves 
the  soul  from  demons  dragging  it  toward  hell.  In  the  Per- 
sian religion  he  is  combined  (as  Sun)  with  Anahita  and 
Ahnra  Mazda.  When  his  cult  spreads  to  the  western  world 
he  becomes  Helios  and  Anahita  becomes  Artemis  Taurop- 
olis.  The  Tauroktonos  Mithra  slays  the  bull  from  whose 
blood  when  sacrified  spring  wheat  and  the  vine,  originally 
the  Horn.  He  is  represented  as  born  of  the  Rock,  *.  e.,  the 
sky ;  his  birth  is  seen  only  by  shepherds,  who  worship 
him.  At  once  he  becomes  the  ally  of  the  sun  and  slays  the 
bull  from  whom  come  all  useful  animals  and  plants,  before 
the  birth  of  man.  His  devotee  receives  the  blood  of  the 
bull,  in  a  symbolic  rite  taken  from  the  Anahita  cult,  yet 
not  to  revive  physical  life  but  to  renew  his  soul.  Mithra- 
ism  inherited  from  Zoroastrianism  the  general  idea  of  the 
soul's  journey,  but  complicated  it  with  a  later  theory  of 
ascents  through  seven  spheres,  each  united  with  a  planet. 
Ottly  the  initiated  could  pass  from  one  stage  to  another,  as 
they  alone  had  the  magic  formula  that  served  as  password. 
Mithraism  also  taught  that  when  the  evil  of  Ahriman  has 
destroyed  the  world,  the  dead  will  be  raised  again  and,  drink- 


412  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ing  of  the  blood  of  the  divine  bull,  will  receive  immortal 
life,  while  fire  will  devour  the  wicked,  Ahriman  and  all. 

Mithra,  as  mediator,  emanated  from  God  and,  as  demi- 
urge, fashioned  the  world  over  which  he  watched.  He  was 
identified  with  the  Logos  and  his  "  glory  "  influenced  the 
deification  of  emperors.  He  gave  the  hope  of  a  happy 
resurrection,  for  he  was  the  purifier  and  saviour  of  souls. 
Beginning  in  Roman  times  to  spread  to  the  West,  Mithraism 
reached  its  highest  development  in  the  third  century  of  our 
era.  Julian  the  Apostate  favoured  it  as  late  as  331-363. 
It  lasted  till  the  fifth  century.  The  cult  took  a  deep  hold 
upon  paganism.  It  became  a  solar  pantheism  in  which 
Mithra  represented  all  gods.  His  worshippers  were  for  a 
long  time  rivals  of  the  Christians.  As  Cumont  says :  "  The 
rites  they  practised  offered  numerous  analogies.  .  .  .  They 
purified  themselves  by  baptism;  received  by  a  species  of 
confirmation  the  power  to  combat  the  spirits  of  evil ;  and 
expected  from  a  Lord's  Supper  salvation  of  body  and  soul." 
In  the  Mithraic  love-feast  the  Last  Supper  commemorates 
the  end  of  the  god's  labours  for  man  (Mithra  saved  man 
from  drought,  flood,  and  fire).  Like  the  Christians,  the 
worshippers  of  Mithra  were  all  "  brothers " ;  they  cele- 
brated Dec.  25  as  the  "  birth-day  of  the  Sun,"  held  Sunday 
as  a  sacred  day,  and  celebrated  a  sort  of  communion.  Their 
code  was  strictly  ethical.  They  "  regarded  asceticism  as 
meritorious  and  counted  among  their  principal  virtues  absti- 
nence, continence,  renunciation,  and  self-control."  Opposed 
to  Zoroastrian  belief,  they  had  celibates  and  a  Summus 
Pontifex  (Tertullian).  Their  own  order  did  not  favour 
female  devotees,  but  they  provided  an  outlet  for  feminine 
devotion  by  allying  themselves  with  the  worshippers  of  the 
Magna  Mater  (Cumont).  They  had  about  the  same  con- 
ception of  the  destiny  of  man  as  had  the  Christians,  admit- 
ting the  existence  of  a  Heaven  above,  the  home  of  saints, 
and  a  hell  of  demons  under-ground.  "  They  both  placed 
a  flood  near  the  beginning  of  history;  they  both  assigned 
as  the  source  of  their  traditions  a  primitive  revelation; 


RELIGION  OF  ZOROASTER  AND  ZOROASTRIANISM        413 

they  both  believed  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  in  a 
last  judgment,  and  in  a  resurrection  of  the  dead,  with  a  final 
conflagration  of  the  universe."  In  the  end  the  higher  ideal 
of  Christianity  won  the  day,  but  only  after  a  momentous 
strife.  Mithraism  had  its  ablest  opponent  in  itself.  Its 
asceticism  was  cruel;  it  was  pre-eminently  a  military  cult; 
its  shibboleth  was  not  gentleness  but  courage;  it  did  not 
honour  women ;  it  was  weighted  with  a  cumbersome  theology 
and  liturgy,  which  failed  to  attract  the  western  world. 
Above  all,  in  contrast  with  Christianity,  it  was  unable  to 
appeal  to  history  and  was  inferior  in  spirituality.1 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

James  Darmesteter,  Avestan  Texts  in  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 

iv  and  xxiii;  also  Mills,  ibid.  xxxi.     French  translation  by 

Darmesteter,  Paris,  1892. 
E.  W.  West,  Pahlavi  Texts  ( 1880)  in  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 

xviii,  xxiv,  xxxvii,  xlvii. 
A.  V.  W.  Jackson,  Zoroaster,  The  Prophet  of  Ancient  Iran, 

New  York,  1899.     The  best  general  work  on  the  subject. 
Volumes  in  the  Grundriss  der  iranischen  Philologie,  by  Geldner 

on  the  old  literature,  West  on  Pahlavi,  Jackson  on  Religion. 
J.  H.  Moulton,  Early  Zoroastrianism,  London,  1913. 
N.  Soederblom,  La  vie  future  d'apres  le  Mazdeisme,  Paris,  1901 ; 

Les  Fravashis,  Paris,  1899. 
Franz  Cumont,  Textes  et  Monuments  figures  relatifs  aux  mys- 

teres  de  Mithra,  Bruxelles,  1899 ;  The  Mysteries  of  Mithra, 

translated  by  T.  J.  McCormack,  Chicago,  1903. 
Carl     Clemen,     Primitive     Christianity    and    Its    Non-Jewish 

Sources,  Edinburgh,  1912. 
A.  J.  Carnoy,  Iranian  Mythology,  Boston,  1917. 

1  Zoroastrian  influence  through  the  medium  of  Mithraism  is  still 
felt  in  the  Freemason-heritage  from  the  Rosicrucians  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  who  preserved  relics  of  the  Mithra-cult.  Compare  Cumont, 
Textes  et  Monuments  and  Mysteries  of  Mithra,  cited  below.  The 
above  is  an  abstract  of  the  chief  points  in  this  authoritative  work. 


CHAPTER  TWENTY 

THE  RELIGION   OF   ISRAEL 

WHAT  is  known  in  regard  to  the  "  Children  of  Israel "  (i.e., 
Jacob)  before  the  time  of  David  (circa  1000  B.  c.)  is  pious 
tradition  rather  than  history.  The  religion  of  this  period 
was  at  first  presumably  that  of  nomads,  until  the  tribes  that 
invaded  Palestine  entered  a  new  economic  environment, 
which  had  already  affected  the  religion  of  their  Semitic 
predecessors  and  now  influenced  Israel.  The  centralizing 
tendencies  of  court  life,  beginning  with  the  establishment 
of  the  kingdom  founded  by  Saul  and  David,  modified  the 
form  of  religion  still  further.  Political  disaster  then 
brought  material  humility  but  spiritual  elevation.  After 
life  had  become  adjusted  to  its  new  conditions,  religion  be- 
came crystallized  in  the  Law,  wherein,  however,  survived 
much  of  the  past. 

Incidental  to  the  internal  development  of  this  religion  was 
the  effect  produced  by  foreign  culture,  that  of  the  Eastern 
Semites,  the  Persians,  the  Greeks.  From  the  first  came 
perhaps  some  legendary  material  and  a  new  appreciation  of 
legal  form.  From  Persia,  certain  mythological  and  escha- 
tological  beliefs.  From  Greece,  new  cultural  and  philo- 
sophical ideas.  Egyptian  influence,  except  possibly  in  leg- 
endary material,  is  not  patent,  though  such  influence  had  al- 
ready existed  in  Palestine  prior  to  the  Israelite  invasion. 

The  Nomadic  Sta^e:  This  is  reflected  in  tradition,  in- 
ferable from  survivals,  and  is  in  accordance  with  analogy. 
Like  the  Bedouins,  the  Israelites  probably  worshipped  va- 
rious daimonia,  formless  powers  of  evil  or  good,  sometimes 
located  but  generally  vague  as  to  nature  and  habitat.  Sac- 
rificial cult  of  some  sort  reverts  to  this  period,  for  prophetic 

414 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  4^5 

denunciation  of  sacrifice  is  not  enough  to  prove  its  absence 
in  the  remote  past.  Probably  the  tribal  god  was  worshipped 
with  a  communion-service  of  blood;  possibly  several  tribes 
had  for  centuries  one  god.  By  analogy  we  may  suppose 
that  the  priest  of  the  god  was  a  magician,  perhaps  carrying 
a  magician's  rod  in  serpent-shape ;  but  this  would  not  imply 
(as  E.  Meyer  has  supposed)  that  the  god  was  a  serpent.1 

The  god  of  the  Israelites,  both  of  the  southern  and  north- 
ern tribes,  was  Yahweh,  a  spirit  possibly  belonging  to  many 
Semitic  groups,  more  especially  to  the  Midianites.  He  was 
the  god  of  this  people,  and  came  from  Horeb,  the  country 
of  the  Midianites.  Possibly  the  later  cult  was  affected  by 
that  of  the  moon-god  Sin  of  Haran  and  Sinai ;  but  this 
depends  in  part  on  whether  the  Sabbath  was  a  later  moon- 
festival.  It  may  have  been  an  old  Semitic  inheritance,  a 
day  of  pacification.2 

Moses  appears  to  have  reunited  the  tribes  after  their  so- 
journ in  Egypt  (or  Goshen).  He  may  have  reintroduced 
them  at  that  time  to  the  god  they  had  once  known.  The 
exaltation  of  a  tribal  god  from  a  spirit  is  in  line  with  Semitic 
tendencies  (compare  Chemosh  of  the  Moabites,  Melek  of 
the  Amorites,  and  more  remotely  Ashur  and  Bel).  Such 
a  god  assumes  all  needed  functions  for  the  protection  of  his 
worshippers.3 

A  pronounced  ethical  trait  is  observable  in  Yahweh  wor-* 
ship  from  the  beginning,  nor  is  this  alien  to  the  general 
Semitic  character.     As  we  have  seen,  it  appears  at  an  early* 
date  among  the  eastern  Semites ;  it  may  have  inhered  in 
other  Semitic  gods,  later  debased  by  agricultural  environ- 

1  For  the  curative  power  of  the  serpent,  compare  Num.  xxi.  6f. 
and  the  symbol  of  Aesculapius. 

2  See  above,  p.  362.     Professor  Barton,  Studies  in  the  History  of 
Religions,  New  York,  1912,  p.  203,  thinks  that  Yahweh's  primary 
office  was  that  of  love  and  fertility.     But  it  is  more  probable  that  he 
was  at  first  a  general  tribal  god,  who  then  acquired  from  successive 
environments  sundry  attributes,  becoming  war-god,  storm-god,  and 
fertility-god  in  turn,  like  Indra  in  India. 

3  On  a  possible  connexion  with  Haran  and  supposed  Aramaean 
influence  on  the  Israelites,  see  Barton,  op.  cit.,  p.  200. 


4*6  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ment.  For,  as  long  as  a  tribe  is  a  fighting  nomadic  entity, 
its  god  reflects  the  simpler  morality  of  its  habitat;  but  a 
change  to  agriculture  introduces  dependence  on  weather 
rather  than  on  war.  The  consequent  cult  of  seasons,  sun, 
and  moon,  leads  to  the  sympathetic  magic  of  productivity, 
and  this  in  turn  introduces  new  rites  affecting  morals  and 
religion.  Thus  the  old  Babylonian  god  was  a  clan-Power 
rather  than  a  natural  phenomenon  and  the  old  Assyrian  god 
was,  like  Yahweh,  a  tribal  war-god,  while  the  early  Phoeni- 
cian and  Syrian  deities  were  also  tribal  (later  city)  gods 
as  Powers  or  presiding  spirits  of  tribes.  The  difference 
between  Yahweh  and  Beelzebub  is  that  the  former,  no 
longer  phenomenal,  retains  his  tribal  existence  as  a  Power 
akin  to  the  tribe,  while  the  latter  is  merely  the  sun  as  king 
of  flies  or  a  power  of  nature  under  one  aspect.  The  latter 
is  as  unmoral  as  nature ;  the  former  as  moral  as  the  best  of 
the  tribe. 

The  people  probably  worshipped  other  gods  besides  Yah- 
weh ;  the  Calf  of  Samaria  and  Golden  Calf  1  were  effigies 
of  agricultural  powers  rivalling  Yahweh  at  a  later  stage; 
the  serpent  was  kept  till  late  in  the  eighth  century  B.  c.,  long 
after  the  people  were  civilized,  just  as  the  household  gods 
called  Teraphim  had  been  preserved  as  such  till  David's  day 
(Gen.  xxxi.  30;  i  Sam.  xix.  13).  Their  spiritual  leaders 
;  endeavoured  vainly  to  make  the  Hebrews  worship  Yahweh 
alone ;  but  even  they  had  no  conception  of  monotheism,  only 
hof  monolatry.2 

Various  nomadic  traits  have  been  assigned  to  the  pre- 
historic Israelites  on  the  ground  that  Arabs  today  show  such 
traits ;  but  many  of  these  may  as  well  belong  to  the  second 

1  The  two  calves  of  Jeroboam,   i   Kg.  xii.  32,  appear  to  be  the 
effigies  of  the  waning  and  waxing  moon,   perhaps   of   Babylonian 
or  general  Semitic  origin. 

2  The  serpent  in  later  times  was  preserved  as  adjunct  of  Yahweh 
rather  than  as  a  separate  god,  till  a  finer  religious  sense  prohibited 
even  this  manifestation.     Its  destruction  c.  720  B.C.  by  Hezekiah  is 
recorded  in  2  Kg.  xviii.  4  ("he  called  it  Nehushtan ").    A  brazen 
serpent  of  this  sort  has  been  found  at  Gezer. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  4*7 

stage,  of  agriculture.  Belief  in  ghosts,  as  in  other  spirits, 
was  probably  early.1  These  are  willing  occasionally  to  help 
men  with  oracular  advice.  But  on  the  whole  ghosts  seek 
blood  and  wander  by  night.  The  Passover,  rites  of  mourn- 
ing, ashes,  and  hiding,  may  show  a  desire  to  escape  the  no- 
tice of  unfriendly  powers.  There  is  no  proof  of  primitive 
Semitic  totemism.  Tatooing  in  honour  of  a  god  was  prac- 
tised in  special  cases  (Ex.  xiii.  9;  Is.  xliv.  5).  Taboo  is 
shown  in  the  distinction  between  clean  and  unclean  animals. 
The  herem,  or  vow  of  destruction,  tabooed  everything ;  hence 
the  sin  of  preserving  anything  in  Jericho  (Joshua  vii). 
Some  think  that  the  notion  of  unclean  animals  was  brought 
from  Egypt  with  the  rite  of  circumcision.  This  rite  was 
probably  part  of  a  tribal  initiation-ceremony,  afterwards 
performed  at  an  earlier  time  of  life ;  but  it  was  not  a  Semitic 
heritage,  as  it  is  unknown  to  the  eastern  Semites  and  to  the 
Philistines.2 

The  worship  of  stones,  trees,  wells,  and  serpents  may 
have  been  agricultural  or  nomadic.3  So  too  of  such  traits 
as  fasting  (Neh.  ix.  i)  ;  absence  of  the  lex  talionis  (Gen.  iv. 
23)  ;  the  practice  of  the  Rechabites  (Jer.  xxxv.)  ;  the  use 
of  bitter  water  as  an  oracle ;  the  scape-goat,  etc.  These  are 
primitive,  but  whether  nomadic  or  not  is  uncertain.4  The 
ark  may  well  have  been  a  survival  of  nomadic  life.  It 
served  as  an  oracle  and  was  taboo  to  the  touch  ( I  Sam.  iv- 
vii.).  It  is  said  to  have  contained  (meteoric?)  stones.  The 
ark  of  Shiloh  may  have  beeen  the  home  of  the  Lord  of 
Shechem,  Baal-Berith,  afterwards  identified  with  Yahweh. 

1  Food  for  the  dead  is  recognized  in  Deut.  xxvi.  14  (not  implying 
worship). 

2  Compare  Ex.  iv.  24$. ;  Josh.  v.  2f. 

3  Such   traits    especially    are    referred   to    "  the    nomadic    stage " 
without  sufficient  cause.     On   the  sanctity  of   the   stone   and   tree, 
terebinth,  hyssop,  cedar,  etc.,  and  survivals  of  wand-oracles   (Gen. 
xxx.  37;  xxxv.  2f. ;  Joshua  xxiv.  26;  Judg.  ix.  6;  Ps.  li.  7),  see  the 
old  but  still  excellent  work  of  Carl  Boetticher,  Der  Baumcultus  der 
Hellenen,  p.  518  (1856). 

4  Marti,  Religion  of  the  Old  Testament,  New  York,  1907,  ch.  xi,  is 
too  ready  to  dub  as  nomadic  traits  possibly  later. 


418  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Such  an  ark  houses  a  second  presence  of  a  god  whose 
home  may  be  afar,  a  necessary  precaution  for  those  righting 
away  from  home,  and  one  taken,  for  example,  by  the  Mex- 
icans. 

All  in  all,  we  know  little  of  the  nomadic  religion  of  Israel, 
though  most  of  the  religious  traits  mentioned  belong  to 
this  or  to  the  succeeding  stage,  after  Moses  had  brought 
the  Hebrews  to  Kadesh,  south  of  Palestine.  It  seems  his- 
torically reasonable  to  believe  that  Moses,  like  Mohammed, 
united  various  tribes  and  made  real  an  ideal  not  wholly 
unknown  before,  in  that  he  gave  Israel  its  jealous  protect- 
ing national  divinity.  Improbable  is  the  theory  that  David 
as  ruler  imposed  Yahweh  on  Israel  after  he  had  consoli- 
dated the  Israelites  by  conquest.1 

The  question  as  to  the  historicity  of  Moses  (not  of  his 
authorship)  raises  the  same  question  in  regard  to  the  Pa- 
triarchs and  other  legendary  figures  of  the  nomadic  past. 
Their  religious  value  remains  the  same  whether  they  ever 
existed  or  not,  since  to  the  later  Israelites  they  were  his- 
torical characters  and  to  us  they  embody,  in  any  event, 
important  historical  matter  involving  religious  data,  not  to 
speak  of  their  value  from  ethical  and  literary  points  of  view. 
The  purely  speculative  "  interpretation  "  of  the  Patriarchs 
as  tribal  heroes,2  local  gods,  or  even  as  natural  phenomena 
(this  last,  however,  never  deserved  consideration),  ignores 
traditional  values  and,  apart  from  that,  remains  guess-work, 
We  may  imagine  Abraham  to  have  been  a  parallel  to  the 
heroes  of  culture-myths  found  in  other  religions  or  a  local 
god;  yet  the  Patriarch,  who  is  said  to  have  come  to  Pales- 
tine via  Haran,  may  have  existed,  though  it  is  historically 
likely  that  he  was  an  idealized  hero.  But  we  must  at  least 
avoid  statements  too  positive  and  incapable  of  verification. 
Thus  it  is  only  partly  true  when  Loisy  declares  that  the 
Patriarchs  never  existed,  that  Moses,  Deborah,  Gideon,  and 

1  Compare  Loisy,  The  Religion  of  Israel,  New  York,  1910,  p.  31. 

2  For  example,  Cain  as  (Cainite)   Kenite,  the  tribe  of  wanderers. 
Compare  Gen.  iv.  14-16  (the  land  of  Nod). 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  4*9 

Samuel  are  largely  legendary,  that  Adam,  Noah,  and  the 
traditions  of  Paradise,  the  Deluge,  and  Babel  are  myths; 
and  that  it  was  the  Prophets  who  inspired  the  law  and  not 
the  law  that  inspired  the  Prophets.  In  this  interpretation 
the  Mosaic  revelation  is  a  theological  romance. 

Myth,  legend,  and  history  are  relative  terms.  The  songs 
of  Lamech  and  of  Deborah  are  perhaps  the  oldest  frag- 
ments in  the  Bible  and  the  existence  of  these  people,  like 
that  of  Gideon  and  Samuel,  may  be  accepted  as  a  fact. 
Moses  appears  to  be  as  historical  as  Buddha,  who,  too,  has 
been  "  interpreted  "  out  of  existence ;  his  personality,  how- 
ever glorified,  was  real;  it  made  history  because  based  on 
history.  However  legendary,  such  characters  ought  never 
to  be  thrown  together  with  the  purely  imaginary  figures  of 
world-beginnings,  which  are  probably  a  common  heritage  of 
the  Semites.  The  Deluge-story,  as  already  shown  (see  p. 
35of.)  is  found  in  Babylonian  tradition  and  the  figure  of 
Adam  also  may  have  a  counterpart  in  that  of  Adapa  (p.  352). 
Compare  also  the  Babylonian  tale  of  which  Professor  Bar- 
ton has  recently  (1917)  given  an  account.  Stories  of 
primeval  monsters  are  probably  heritage  rather  than  loan. 
Finally,  that  the  Prophets  inspired  the  law,  depends  on  the 
definition  of  law.  When  we  speak  of  Jewish  law,  we  must 
first  explain  whether  we  mean  the  legal  code  or  law  in 
general.  There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  Prophets 
knew  a  holy  law,  probably  even  many  of  the  minute  di- 
rections afterwards  codified  in  the  Priestly  Code.  A  code 
is  based  on  law  not  law  on  a  code.  An  Israelite  code  of 
some  sort  existed  by  the  ninth  century  B.  c.  We  may  safely 
assume  that  even  in  their  nomadic  state  the  Israelites  had 
laws;  and  from  what  we  know  of  primitive  people  these 
laws  were  probably  in  part  due  to  oracular  enunciation  of 
divine  commands.  On  the  other  hand,  they  did  not  as 
nomads  have  the  code  known  as  the  Priestly  Code  (of  the 
Pentateuch),  for  this  arose  under  agricultural,  not  nomadic, 
conditions.  Very  likely  the  earliest  law  was  that  implied  by 
Ex.  xxxiv,  before  it  was  affected  by  agricultural  customs : 


42O  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

to  have  but  one  god  and  no  images,  to  observe  the  Sabbath 
and  Passover,  not  to  use  leaven,  perhaps  to  sacrifice,  or 
redeem,  the  first-born  (this  was  a  Canaanite  custom). 
The  leaven  was  taboo  because  it  implied  corruption. 

The  Israelites  made  sundry  tribes  belonging  to  different 
groups.  The  group  of  "  Rachel-tribes "  is  supposed  to 
have  entered  Palestine  from  the  east  about  1200  B.  c.,  after 
a  sojourn  in  Egypt.  Three  other  groups  of  tribes  invaded 
the  country,  of  whom  the  most  important  were  the  "  Leah- 
tribes  "  who  (including  Judah),  may  have  preceded  the 
Rachel-tribes  by  a  century  or  two.1 

The  Israelites  who  invaded  Canaan  mingled  with  the 
earlier  population  and  gradually  overcame  them,  though  in 
the  process  they  became  assimilated  to  the  Canaanites. 
Under  David  the  Judaean  tribes  appear  to  have  become 
united  into  a  body  politic,  the  kingdom  of  David,  which 
eventually  conquered  the  earlier  kingdom  of  Israel  in  the 
north  (Samaria).  The  second  stage  of  religion  begins  with 
the  entry  of  the  Israelite  into  the  fertile  land  of  Palestine, 
whose  inhabitants  had  a  more  advanced  civilization  2  than 
that  of  Israel  and  a  religion  based  on  agricultural  life.3 

1  The  received  view  is  that  Samaria  and  Judaea  were  occupied  by 
tribes  driven  out  of  the  desert,  supposedly  by  such  a  famine  as 
previously,  at  intervals  of  half  a  millennium,  had  led  to  the  emigra- 
tion of   other   Semites,   later  known   as   Babylonians,    Phoenicians, 
Canaanites,  etc.     This  is  not  history  but  speculation.    The  aboriginal 
Semites  may  have  been  Africans,  who  spread  into  Syria  and  Arabia ; 
but  the  immediate  ancestors  of  Babylonians  and  Hebrews  may  as 
well  derive  from  the  northern  hills  as   from  the  southern  desert. 
The  exodus  of  the  Leah  and  Rachel  tribes  are  ascribed  to  the  time 
of  the  XVIII  and  XIX  Egyptian  dynasties,  respectively. 

2  Solomon  had  to  send  to  Tyre  for  Hiram  the  worker  in  metal. 
The  Hebrews  had  no  smith  in  Samuel's  day  (i  Sam.  xiii.  19;  i  Kg. 
yii).    Compare  Judg.  i.  19;  iv.  13,  on  the  use  of  iron  by  the  Canaan- 
ites in  the  thirteenth  century. 

3  The  earlier  inhabitants  of  Palestine  were  Amorites,  who  had 
displaced  a  non-Semitic  race,  c.  2500  B.  c.,  and  remained  in  possession 
till  Hebraic  times,  though  contending  with  the  (Cretan)   Philistines 
and  Canaanites,  who   entered  the  land   about   1800  B.  c.     Palestine 
belonged  to   Egypt   in  the   fifteenth   and   thirteenth   centuries   B.  c. 
The  Aramaeans   (about  1300  B.  c.)   are  spoken  of  as   Palestinians. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL 

This  religion  of  Canaan  was  practically  one  with  the 
religion  of  the  Phoenicians,  that  is  to  say,  a  religion  already 
exposed  to  the  influence  of  Babylon  and  Egypt  in  addition 
to  the  native  Semitic  cult,  which,  like  the  neighbouring 
Semitic  cults,  differed  from  that  of  the  Israelites  in  sev- 
eral particulars.  The  chief  divinity  was  Astarte,  as  mother 
of  life;  scarcely  less  popular  were  Bel  and  Hadad;  Egyp- 
tian and  Babylonian  gods  were  worshipped.  The  Mother 
of  Life  as  giver  of  produce  was  most  honoured.  Chief  of 
victims  were  the  first-born  and  these  included  children, 
whose  bones  have  been  found  at  many  shrines  and  founda- 
tions. Groves  and  hills  were  favourite  holy  places.  Ash- 
eras,1  tree-stumps,  and  Massebas,  stone  pillars,  anointed 
with  oil,  typified  female  and  male  divinity ;  originally  they 
were  themselves  divinities,  but  later  they  were  placed  about 
the  shrine  of  local  gods.  The  land  has  passed  from  poly- 
demonism  and  worship  of  stocks  and  stones  to  polytheism, 
but  retained  the  old,  more  or  less  understood,  with  the  new. 
Blood  sacrifice  was  here  an  offering  not  a  communion- 
service.  Earth  and  hewn  rock  altars  (later  forbidden,  Ex. 
xx.  25f.)  were  raised  to  many  gods,  but  chiefly  to  the 
mother  goddess  of  fertility.  The  open  rites  in  her  honour 
were  naturally  based  on  her  functions,  so  that  here,  as  else- 
where, the  more  developed  moral  sense  of  man  was  higher 
than  the  religious  practice.2  Conscious  excess,  not  naive 
nature-worship,  marked  the  practice  of  the  cult.  The  god- 
dess called  the  "  great  one  "  was  the  chief  Phoenician  deity 
by  1400  B.  c.  and  this  was  probably  the  case  in  Canaan,  as 
in  Syria  "  the  goddess "  was  chief.  With  her  was  that 
Adados,  who  appears  as  Adonis  in  Greece  and  Attis  in 

Between  1225  and  1215  B.  c.  Merneptah,  the  Pharaoh,  exults  that 
"  Israel  is  desolated." 

1  Compare  the  Asher  tribe,  named  from  its  god,   like  the  tribe 
Gad,  named  from  the  god  Gad. 

2  Religious    conservatism    retained    rites    ordinarily    offensive    to 
decency,  as  in  Greece  and  Rome.    There  is  a  difference  between 
naive  practice  and  religious  sophisticated  practice.     The  former  is 
not  indecent   (immoral)    at  all;  the  latter  is  decent  only  as  it  is 
religious. 


422  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Asia  Minor,  usually  regarded  as  personifying  spring's  brief 
glory  slain  by  the  boar  (at  Byblos),  representing  summer 
heat.  Sometimes  this  god  is  identified  with  Rimmon  (Zech. 
xii.  1 1 ) .  At  Ascalon  close  to  Canaan  the  goddess  appeared 
with  a  fish-body  (Derketo),  still  as  the  deity  of  productivity 
generally  called  Astarte,  Astoreth,  or  Atargatis,  originally 
a  form  of  Ishtar,  whose  love  for  Tammuz  is  referred  to  by 
Ezekiel  (viii.  14).  Antioch  and  Lebanon,  as  well  as  Byblos 
and  Cyprus,  were  seats  of  the  orgiastic  cult  of  these  fer- 
tility demons  raised  to  divinities,  whose  priests  and  priest- 
esses mutilated  themselves  in  honour  of  the  goddess  and 
whose  festivals  were  adopted  by  the  Israelites  till  the  eth- 
ical vigour  of  their  nation  suppressed  this  religious  abuse. 
The  symbols  of  the  male  power  were  many,  bull,  ram,  boar, 
eagle,  as  those  of  the  female  power  were  diversified  as  cow, 
dove,  fish,  etc.  The  relation  between  man  and  this  divine 
power  was  sometimes  that  of  filial  devotion.  Pious  kings 
and  priests  call  themselves  sons,  brothers,  and  beloved  of 
Baal;  but  usually  ordinary  men  are  "  dogs  "  (slaves)  of  the 
Lord.  This  shows  at  least  a  sense  of  human  dependence 
on  the  divinity.  But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  all  the 
western  Semites  were  voluptuaries.  There  were  strong 
gods  (Molechs)  who  had  to  do  with  laws  as  well  as  fer- 
tility. The  Moon-cult  is  here  austere.  The  gods  of  Tyre 
and  Sidon  were  stern,  exacting  human  sacrifice.  Yahweh 
was  of  this  sort,  a  god  of  vengeance  and  fury  (Is.  Ixiii. 
3-6).  The  Lord  of  Phoenicia  is  a  solar  fire-god,  Sharraph 
(compare  Seraph),  with  six  wings  (cf.  Is.  vi.  2). 

Besides  these  chief  figures  were  worshipped  also  "  Chal- 
dean "  gods,  sun,  moon,  stars,  and  gods  of  wind,  of  dance, 
of  mercy,  and  of  fortune  (Gad),  known  to  Phoenician  and 
Canaanite  alike.  Towns  such  as  Tyre,  Sidon,  and  Tarsus 
had  each  its  city-god,  as  before  the  time  of  cities  each  tribe 
had  its  tribal  god.  So  in  Judaea  every  city  had  its  god. 
Sometimes  there  is  a  reversion  to  the  primitive  demonism 
which  ignores  sex.  Thus  in  Cyprus  an  androgynous  god 
was  worshipped.  But  usually  the  demon  had  become  either 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  423 

a  god  or  a  goddess.  Very  rarely  such  a  god  is  known,  as 
at  Byblos,  simply  as  El,  that  is  a  Mighty  One,  who  had  no 
shrine,  no  priest,  and  no  service.1 

Israel  could  not  live  in  such  an  environment  without 
modifying  its  own  religion.  In  Samaria,  Baal-worship  was 
formally  countenanced  by  Ahab,  son  of  Omri,  as  a  political 
measure.  The  god  Chemosh  was  recognized  under  Solo- 
mon in  Judaea.  Compare  Judg.  viii.  33 :  "  As  soon  as 
Gideon  was  dead  they  went  after  Baalim  and  made  Baal 
Berith  their  god  "  ;  i  Kg.  xvi.  31  f. :  "  Ahab  reared  an  altar 
for  Baal  in  Samaria  and  made  a  grove " ;  I  Kg.  xi.  7 : 
"  Solomon  built  a  high  place  for  Chemosh  of  Moab  on  the 
hill  before  Jerusalem  and  for  Molech  " ;  and  ib.  5  :  "  Solo- 
mon went  after  Astoreth  of  Sidon  and  after  Milcom  (Mo- 
lech)  of  the  Ammonites."  2  Hezekiah  suppressed  the  coun- 
try-shrines in  favour  of  the  Temple  (2  Kg.  xviii.)  ;  but 
Hezekiah's  son  Manasseh  (seventh  century)  worshipped  a 
host  of  gods  of  sky  and  earth. 

Thus  for  centuries  the  worship  of  Baalim  held  side  by 
side  with  that  of  Yahweh  and  was  as  popular  with  Israelite 
as  with  Canaanite.  Moreover,  as  the  peoples  merged  into 
one  body,  so  the  religions  merged.  Yahweh  became  god 
not  only  of  the  Israelites  but  of  the  Canaanites,  whose  older 
gods  he  ousted  from  their  shrines,  as  at  Bethel  and  Shechem. 
Conversely,  Canaanite  cultus  became  directed  toward  Yah- 
weh, who  thus  became  an  agricultural  deity,  and  so  entered 
into  competition  with  the  native  gods.  In  the  north  there 
was  a  formal  tournament  of  gods,  to  see  which  was  the 
better.  The  priests  of  Baal  danced  and  cut  themselves  after 
their  manner  but  in  vain,  while  the  fire  of  Yahweh  fell, 

1  Though  the  various  goddesses   (and  gods)   of  Ishtar  character 
(Astaste,  etc.)  are  not  the  same  divinity,  they  represent  under  vari- 
ous forms  and  names  the  same  idea  to  the  various  tribes,  that  of 
the  life-principle,   a  sex-cult  retained   till   Mohammedan   days  and 
surviving  in  the  Mihrab  and  horse-shoe  arch. 

2  Chemosh  is  regarded  as  a  real  god  (of  the  Moabites)  in  Judg. 
xi.  24.     His  worship  was  later  abolished  by  Josiah,  who  also  put 
down  the  cult  of  sun,  moon,  planets,  and  other  hosts  of  heaven  (2 
Kg.  xxiii;  compare  Jer.  viii.  2). 


4^4  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

after  Elijah  had  repaired  his  broken  altar.  Then  the 
spectators  of  the  tournament  decided  that  Yahweh  was  God 
(i  Kg.  xviii.).  Another  contest  took  place  betweeen  the 
divine  ark  and  Dagon  of  the  Philistines,  a  fish-god  counter- 
part of  Derketo  (above;  cf.  Judg.  xvi.  23;  i  Sam.  5).  The 
cart  carrying  the  ark  "  came  into  the  field  of  Joshua  the 
Bel-Shamite,"  an  indication  that  the  worship  of  the  sun, 
Shamash,  was  popular.1  This  polytheism  was  not  easily 
stamped  out.  It  was  really  the  popular  religion  of  Israel 
until  after  the  Exile.  One  cannot  read  the  accounts  of 
"  Israel's  adultery  "  throughout  the  Old  Testament  without 
being  impressed  with  the  fact  that  Yahweh's  strict  wor- 
shippers were  only  a  small  group  in  a  great  host  of  idola- 
trous Israelites,  who  even  admitted  foreign  gods  into  Yah- 
weh's very  tabernacle  and  were  always  ready  to  worship 
Baal.  So  say  even  the  Jews :  "  Excepting  David,  Heze- 
kiah,  and  Josiah,  all  the  kings  of  Judah  forsook  the  Law  of 
the  Most  High"  (Ecclesiasticus  xlix.  4). 

The  establishment  of  a  kingdom,  first  of  Israel  and  then 
of  Judah,2  gave  to  religion  the  centralization  of  the  court. 
Any  head  of  a  family  or  the  head  of  the  tribe  might  orig- 
inally make  a  sacrifice.  But  now  priests  3  under  the  king 
became  official  sacrificers  at  a  city  temple  (instead  of  a 
"  high  place  "),  which  tended  to  become  the  only  place  of  sac- 
rifice. God  himself  was  treated  as  a  king  (as  a  king  was 

1  Similar  place-names  in  Palestine  reveal  the  worship  of  Phoeni- 
cian gods.    The  horses  of  Shamash  are  not  recognized  till  2  Kg. 
xxiii.  u,  due  to  Assyrian  influence. 

2  After  Saul  had  been  made  first  king  of  Israel  (i  Sam.  viii-x.  24 
and  2  Sam.  v),  David,  in  the  next  generation  (c.  1000  B.C.),  became 
king  of  Judah  and  Israel,  his  capital  being  old  Jebus,  a  Canaanite 
town,  regarded  in  the  Bible  as  old  Salem  (Gen.  xiv.  18).     Here,  at 
Jerusalem,  Solomon,  imitating  his  neighbours,  built  the  temple  David 
piously  feared  to  erect   (i   Chron.  xxii,  xxviii.  3).     Solomon  died 
937  B.  c.    Under  his  son  Rehoboam  ten  tribes  revolted  from  Judah. 
Then  the  city  was  taken  by  Shishak,  king  of  Egypt,  plundered  by 
the  Philistines  (c.  845  B.C.),  and  like  Israel  (842  B.C.)  invaded  and 
overthrown  by  the  Assyrians    (Sargon  and   Sennacherib,   722   and 
701  B.C.). 

3  With   the   Babylonian   bdruti    (diviners)    compare   the   Hebrew 
barim,  priests  as  seers,  later  inspectors  of  meat. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL 

almost  divine,  2  Sam.  xiv.  17).  Yahweh  had  his  palatial 
home,  became  exclusive,  was  served  by  a  certain  class  or 
family  (of  Zadok).  Yahweh,  who  had  been  especially  the 
war-god  of  the  tribe,1  now  had  his  agricultural  festivals, 
services,  and  tribute.  The  early  Book  of  the  Covenant  (Ex. 
xix-xxiii.)  shows  already  wholly  agricultural  conditions. 
The  old  new-moon  feast  and  those  of  first  fruits,  vintage, 
harvest  (Feast  of  Weeks),  were  simply  transferred  from 
the  Canaanite  Bamoth  to  the  altar  of  Baal  Yahweh ;  former 
victims  of  the  Baalim  became  those  of  Yahweh.  The  fes- 
tival as  a  "  dance  "  still  retained  its  force  as  "  dancing  be- 
fore the  Lord  "  (Judg.  xxi.  igf. ;  2  Sam.  vi.  16).  The  new- 
moon  feast  may  have  been  more  feast  than  religious  cere- 
mony (i  Sam.  xx.  5),  but  the  feast  of  unleavened  bread 
and  that  of  Pentecost  (the  fiftieth  day  after  the  Passover) 
were  harvest  festivals. 

Thrice  a  year,  at  the  festivals  of  First  Fruits,  of  Weeks 
(Harvest),  and  of  the  Tabernacle  (Vintage),  all  male 
Israelites  came  before  the  Lord  with  their  tribute  of  fruits 
as  gifts.  The  sacrifice  was  now  one  of  tribute,  as  to  a  king. 
The  cultus  became  the  chief  religious  factor  and  differen- 
tiated this  stage  of  religion  most  forcibly  from  the  earlier 
stage.  The  Canaanite  Asheras  and  Massebas  and  even  the 
foreign  Hierodouloi  (also  -ai)  contaminated  the  Yahweh 
cult.  Yet  Yahweh  himself,  as  lord  of  all  the  land,  became 
more  revered  than  any  local  Baal.  The  sub-divided  Yah- 
weh, indicated  by  a  Yahweh-nissi  at  Kadesh  or  a  Lord  God 
of  Sabaoth  at  Shiloh,  never  really  divided  the  conception. 
Yahweh  still  remained  one  God  and  withal,  despite  Canaan- 
ite influence,  one  moral  God,  whose  worshippers  must  not 
only  sacrifice  to  him  but  follow  his  moral  law.  A  loftier 
conception  of  God  was  introduced  by  the  gradual  sup- 

1God  of  armies,  a  "man  of  war"  (i  Sam.  xvii.  45;  Ex.  xv.  3)  ; 
cf.  Lord  God  of  Sabaoth,  that  is  of  the  armed  hosts.  Hence  the 
Prophets  say  (Amos  v.  25;  Jer.  vii.  22)  that  Yahweh  did  not  care 
for  (agricultural)  sacrifices.  As  war-lord,  Yahweh  was  commem- 
orated in  the  old  Book  of  the  Wars  of  the  Lord.  Compare  the  war- 
cry,  Judg.  vii.  18,  "the  sword  of  the  Lord." 


426  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

pression  of  the  local  shrines  and  though  Yahweh  was  still 
god  of  storm,  of  rain,  of  dance,  etc.,  he  was  so  not  as  a 
phenomenal  or  departmental  god  but  as  the  only  God,  mani- 
festing himself  in  all  phenomena.  It  is  true  that  the  old 
tales,  judged  by  modern  standards,  do  not  represent  either 
the  worshipper  or  his  God  as  morally  perfect.  Pharaoh  is 
shocked  by  Abraham's  immorality  (Gen.  xii.  iof.).  Yah- 
weh himself  is  deceitful,  not  to  say  capricious  and  cruel. 
There  is  a  lying  spirit  of  God  (i  Kg.  xxii.  2if.)  ;  God 
deceives  cruelly  when  he  persuades  men  to  sacrifice  their 
first-born  (Ezek.  xx.  25f.).1  Yet  Jeremiah  doubts  if  God 
ever  commanded  the  horrors  perpetrated  in  his  name.  Jer- 
emiah was  right.  Such  service  does  not  correspond  to 
the  ideal  of  Yahweh  as  a  God  of  mercy.  Despite  practices 
adopted  from  the  Canaanites  and  old  tales,  the  God  of 
Israel  tended  ever  to  become  morally  supreme  over  the 
nature-gods  of  Canaan.  In  this  he  reflects  the  state-con- 
ception of  morality  as  obedience.  Yahweh  thus  delights  less 
in  sacrifice  than  in  obedience  (i  Sam.  xv.  22).  This  note 
becomes  the  theme  of  the  Prophets,  the  moral  successors  of 
the  Patriarchs,  who  also  lived  on  speaking  terms  with  God. 
But  before  their  religion  is  discussed,  the  literature  known 
to  them  must  be  examined. 

The  early  Prophets  do  not  appeal  to  the  Pentateuch ;  they 
probably  did  not  know  it.  But  it  is  probable  that  they  knew 
as  authoritative  moral  lessons  the  early  tales  of  Genesis. 
The  Pentateuch  (later  referred  to  Moses)  is  generally  be- 
lieved to  be  a  compilation,  the  product  of  various  writers 

1  The  Tophet-sacrifice  was  made  to  Yahweh  Molech.  Moabite, 
Phoenician,  and  Israelite  all  offer  to  their  gods  sacrifice  of  children 
(the  foundation-sacrifice,  i  Kg.  xvi.  34;  cf.  2  Kg.  iii.  27).  Compare 
2  Kg.  xxi-xxiii;  Josh.  xv.  8;  Jer.  vii.  31 ;  xix.  2f.  The  "  Tophet  in 
the  valley  of  the  son  of  Hinnom,"  south  of  Jerusalem  was  where 
the  Canaanites  and  then  the  Jews  burned  their  sons  and  daughters, 
though  they  burned  their  sons  also  on  the  high-places.  Manasseh 
still  permitted  this,  but  Josiah  abolished  the  practice  late  in  the 
seventh  century.  Compare  Ex.  xxii.  29.  Hinnom  as  Ge  Hinnom 
became  Gehenna,  the  mouth  of  hell,  typical  of  fiery  punishment 
hereafter. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  427 

during  several  centuries,  who,  however,  made  use  of  much 
older  legal  and  legendary  material.  The  early  writers  of 
the  ninth  and  eighth  centuries  known  as  the  Yahwist  and 
Elohist  appear  to  represent  traditions  of  the  tribes  of  Judah 
and  of  Israel,  respectively.  At  a  much  later  date  (fifth 
century)  priestly  writers  are  supposed  to  have  combined 
these  earlier  writings  with  their  own  contributions  to  what 
is  now  the  Pentateuch,  after  the  Deuteronomic  code  had 
been  established.  The  Pentateuch  as  a  whole  would  thus 
be  a  work  composed  after  the  Exile.  The  difference  between 
the  early  Yahwist  and  Elohist  is  partly  geographical  and 
tribal,  partly  a  difference  of  style  and  method.  The  Judean 
Yahwist  assumes  that  Yahweh  was  the  name  of  God  from 
the  beginning,  while  the  Israelite  Elohist  assumes  that  the 
name  Yahweh  was  first  revealed  to  Moses.  The  northern 
tribes  probably  adopted  the  name  Yahweh  at  the  time  of 
the  covenant  which  was  consummated  at  the  sacrifice  men- 
tioned in  Ex.  xxiv.  i-n.  There  is  from  this  point  of  view 
no  historical  contradiction  between  Elohist  and  Yahwist. 
Each  speaks  for  his  own  people  in  accordance  with  his  na- 
tive tradition.1 

The  distribution  of  parts,  according  to  the  current  view, 
roughly  outlined,  implies  that  only  fragments  of  the  Elo- 
hist's  writings  are  utilized  by  the  later  compilers  till  Gen.  xx. 
(the  story  of  Sarah)  ;  then,  belonging  to  the  Elohist,  would 
come  the  stories  of  Ishmael,  of  Abraham's  covenant,  of  the 
sacrifice  of  Isaac  and  his  blessing,  of  Jacob's  dream  and  his 
service  and  children  (the  twelve  Patriarchs),  of  the  meeting 
with  Esau,  and  in  part  the  story  of  Joseph.  The  (also 
Elohistic)  priestly  writers  three  hundred  years  later  (c.  450 
B.  c.)  wrote  the  lofty  first  chapter  of  Genesis  and  much 
of  the  genealogical  and  legal  matter  of  the  Pentateuch,  one 
story  of  the  Deluge  (the  rain-bow  covenant,  Gen.  vi.  gi. ; 

1  Compare  Ex.   iii.  1-14 ;   vi.  3 ;   Gen.   xxxv.    lof . ;   but  also  the 

Yahwist  s   statement,  Gen.    iv.   26.    The    Patriarchs    (it   is   said   in 

Joshua)  worshipped  "other  gods"  and  did  not  know  the  name 
Yahweh. 


428  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ix.  n),  the  covenant  by  circumcision,  etc.  The  Yahwist's 
account  (thus  divided)  is  much  more  na'ive  and  picturesque 
than  that  of  the  Elohist.  To  him  would  belong  the  stories 
of  the  temptation  and  fall  (Gen.  ii.  5f.),  of  Cain,  of  the 
"  sons  of  God,"  of  Isaac  and  Rebeka,  the  alternate  Deluge- 
story  (Gen.  vi.  7;  vii.  if.),1  the  story  of  Babel,  of  the  rape 
of  Sarah,  of  the  destruction  of  Sodom,  of  Esau's  loss  of 
birth-right,  and  parts  of  the  story  of  Jacob  and  Joseph. 
In  this  (Yah wist)  material  there  is  implicit  an  antecedent 
polytheism  (Gen.  xi.  7),  showing  that  the  author  used  still 
older  matter.2  He  himself  is  inclined  to  a  more  anthropo- 
morphic conception  of  God  than  are  the  later  priestly  writ- 
ers. Even  the  earlier  Prophets  are,  as  regards  monotheism, 
less  advanced  than  the  later  Prophets,  Ezekiel  and  the  Sec- 
ond Isaiah.3  Yahweh  is  the  Creator  only  in  these  later 
writers.  As  late  as  the  Priestly  Code,  the  Creator  is  Yah- 
weh rather  than  Yahweh  the  Creator.4 

1  Of  the  two  Deluge  stones  that  of  the  Yahwist  is  older;  it  is 
more   like   the   Babylonian    story.    The   priestly   writers   make   the 
flood  last  a  year;  the  Yahwist,  only  two  months.     For  parallels  to 
the  story,  see  Usener,  Die  Sintftutsage.n,  Bonn,   1899.    The  Hindu 
and  (late)   Greek  stories  may  have  been  influenced  by  the  Semitic, 
though  there  are  deluge-stories  in  many  parts  of  the  world.     The 
Biblical  account  may  have  been  based   on   old   material  known   in 
Palestine   before   Judah    entered    it.    This    is   more   probable   than 
that  it  was  taken  direct  from  Babylon  in  the  eighth  century  or  first 
written  after  the  exile. 

2  This  trait  as  a  belief  in  a  plurality  of  deities,  or  forms  of  deity, 
was  preserved  in  Jewish  Kabbalism.     The  Hebrews  spoke  of  God's 
"  angel,"  of  his  Face,  or  Word,  as  an  hypostasis  of  God,  but  other 
Semites  made  such  hypostases  into  separate  gods.     So  in  Palmyra 
Mal-'ak-Bel,  "  angel  of  Bel,"  is  a  god. 

3  That   is    (the   Babylonian)    Is.    xl-lvi    (circa   550  B.C.).     Some 
assume  a  later  Third  Isaiah,  Is.  Ivi-lxvi  (circa  450  B.C.)  of  Jerusa- 
lem, while  the  Priestly  Code  was  forming  in  Babylon.     Parts  of  Is. 
xlii,  xlix,  1,  Hi  are  of  doubtful  origin. 

*  It  should  be  noticed,  however,  that  the  results  of  the  Higher 
criticism,  which,  as  above,  divides  the  Old  Testament  stories  into 
various  sections,  are  not  universally,  though  generally,  accepted. 
Professor  Edouard  Naville  contends  that  the  earliest  Biblical  texts 
were  written  in  Babylonian  cuneiform  and  the  later  backs  in  Ara- 
maic. Characteristic  words  and  phrases  separating  the  sections 
would  thus  be  due  not  to  the  author  (Moses,  who  wrote  the  Penta- 
teuch), but  to  the  later  translators.  This  would,  for  example,  re- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL 

The  Elohistic  Commandments  of  Ex.  xx.  reflect  the 
sterner  ethical  traits  of  the  northern  kingdom  as  compared 
with  the  ritualistic  agricultural  environment  of  Ex.  xxxiv. 
In  the  later  decalogue  no  ritualism  remains;  Yahweh  de- 
mands only  ethical  purity.  This  may  be  accepted  as  the 
first  fruits  of  northern  prophetic  reaction  against  the  de- 
based southern  cult.  It  recognizes  as  the  supreme  spir- 
itual power  a  moral  God.  At  the  same  time  it  is  not  yet 
monotheistic  1  and  the  moral  law  is  external.  Thou  shalt 
not  swear  falsely  (take  God's  name  in  vain),  nor  commit 
overt  sins,  murder,  theft,  adultery,  casting  the  evil  eye 
(covet;  compare  Ecclesiasticus  xxxi.  [xxxiv.]  13:  "God 
hateth  the  evil  eye;  evil  is  the  envious  eye  ").  But  even  in 
the  later  form  there  is  no  commandment  of  pure  thought, 
gentleness,  lovingkindness.  This  inner  morality  comes  later 
to  expression. 

Religion  of  the  Prophets:  In  the  magnificent  prose  epic 
which  has  come  down  to  us  under  the  name  of  Samuel  we 
are  told  that  the  prophet  was  originally  called  a  seer.  The 
two  functions  are  united  in  Samuel  himself,  who  gives  an 
oracle  and  expounds  the  superiority  of  obedience  over  sac- 
rifice. By  enunciating  the  will  of  God,  which  was  discov- 
ered by  lots  or  dreams  or  prophets,  the  oracle  became  a 
law-giver.  As  sickness  was  a  dispensation  of  spiritual  pow- 
ers, the  prophet  also  had  to  do  with  medicine.  To  a  certain 
extent  he  had  jurisdiction  over  litigation.  But  above  all 
else  he  was  a  seer,  who  without  intervention  of  mechanical 
means,  lots,  ordeals,  etc.,  proclaimed  the  future  as  he  pro- 
claimed God's  will.2  This  he  did  as  inspired;  he  spoke  in 

store  the  unity  of  the  Joseph  story,  and  in  general  overthrow  the 
divisions  made  by  the  Higher  Criticism.  The  hypothesis  has  its 
weak  side  philologically,  but  merits  attention. 

1  Jeremiah,  about  600  B.  c.,  first  declared   that   other  gods  were 
non-existent  figments  of  the  imagination.    The  first  commandment 
implies  the  existence  of  gods  in  whom  the  Hebrews  should  not  put 
their  trust  (monolatry  not  monotheism). 

2  Samuel  was  not  a  nabi  (prophet)  but  a  soothsayer.     Previously 
prophets  were  soothsayers  (i  Sam.  ix.  9).     The  soothsayer  merely 
revealed  material  matters  and  spoke  by  dreams  or  lots,  at  any  rate 
by  "  rule  of  thumb,"  not  by  inspiration. 


43°  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ecstasy.  Prophetic  bands  with  music  and  dance  like  mys- 
tics roamed  the  land  in  a  somewhat  orgiastic  manner.1 
Eventual  prophetic  fanaticism  led  to  such  symbolic  per- 
formances as  those  of  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah,  one  of  whom 
went  naked  and  the  other  wore  a  yoke,  to  show  the  fate 
of  Jerusalem  and  the  necessity  of  submitting  to  foreign 
rule,  respectively.  The  prophets  were  always  rather  ex- 
citable visionaries  who  sometimes  had  to  be  restrained  by 
the  police.  They  were  of  political  importance  from  the 
beginning.  They  countenanced  the  secession  after  Solo- 
mon's death.  In  Israel,  Elijah  quarrelled  with  King  Ahab 
because  the  king,  as  ally  of  Tyre  and  to  defend  himself 
against  Damascus,  had  married  a  Phoenician  princess  and 
permitted  the  erection  of  an  altar  to  Baal  Melkart,  though 
Yahweh  was  retained  as  the  national  god.  Jehu  was  set 
upon  the  throne  through  a  military  plot  supported  by  Elisha 
and  aided  by  the  Rechabite  Jonadab  ("Jehu  destroyed  Baal 
out  of  Israel,"  2  Kg.  x.).2 

Isaiah's  assertion  that  Jerusalem  could  not  be  destroyed 
(xxxi.)  had  a  lasting  effect  on  Jewish  politics.  Prophetic 
activity  had  much  to  do  with  breaking  up  the  local  shrines, 
as  "  sin  of  Dan,"  "  sin  of  Samaria,"  etc.  In  the  end  this 
concentrated  the  worship  of  Yahweh  at  Jerusalem  and  con- 
solidated the  union  of  church  and  state,  which  led  to  the 
conception  of  a  national  instead  of  a  tribal  god.  This  in 
turn  was  the  first  step  toward  the  conception  of  a  world- 
god,  who  for  his  own  ends  could  even  permit  Israel  to  be 
conquered  in  order  that  righteousness  might  prevail  at  the 
loss  of  Israel's  prestige. 

Politically  the  Prophets  prevented  the  growth  of  Israel. 

1  Loisy  goes  too  far  when  he  says  that  "  Saul  also  among  the 
prophets"  was  due  to  the  noise  made  by  Saul    (op.  cit.,  ch.  in). 
The  text  says  that  he  joined  the  corybantic  troop  and  prophesied 
with  them  (i  Sam.  x.  iof.). 

2  Elijah  goes  clad  in  skins  and  affects  the  desert  as  his  home; 
he  reverts  to   the  nomadic  Yahweh,   avoids  Jerusalem,   and   seeks 
Yahweh  at  Horeb   (i   Kg.  xix),  a  strong  contrast  to  the  courtier 
and  politician  Elisha.     Elijah's  worth  lies  in  his  insistence  on  ethics 
versus  ritual. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  431 

In  an  age  when  an  alliance  was  necessarily  religious  as  well 
as  political,  they  hampered  every  attempt  to  enlarge  the 
kingdom.  Elijah  objects  as  much  to  the  Judaean  agricul- 
tural Yahweh  as  to  Melkart.  No  confederation  was  pos- 
sible with  the  neighbours  who  might  have  united  with  Israel 
to  defy  Assyria  so  long  as  the  implacable  Prophets  would 
have  no  dealings  even  with  their  own  kin,  still  less  with 
foreigners,  who  were  idolatrous.  They  accepted  political 
defeat  as  a  due  punishment.  They  did  not  make  the  mag- 
nificent resolution  to  sacrifice  the  state  to  God,  nor  did  they 
see  that  their  own  counsel  had  been  instrumental  in  making 
a  martyr  of  Israel.  But  it  is  probable  that  if  they  had 
foreseen  they  would  not  have  swerved  from  their  path.  To 
them  righteousness  was  the  supreme  issue.  The  moral  and 
spiritual  gain  was  immense.  What  remained  from  their 
former  condition  was  still  the  inspiration,  the  call  to  speak 
in  God's  name,  and  their  speech  was  always  the  same  from 
that  of  Elijah  and  the  shepherd  Amos  to  Malachi:  "Re- 
nounce the  sin  of  the  Baalim;  Yahweh  demands  righteous- 
ness more  than  sacrifice ;  for  your  sin  you  suffer."  To  this 
the  later  prophet  added  the  hope  that  the  suffering  would 
suffice,  that  Israel  would  again  be  great  and  blessed.  The 
keynote  of  the  earliest  Prophets  is  voiced  in  Elijah's  protest 
against  the  cult ;  morality  not  ritual  is  Yahweh's  demand. 

To  the  forerunners  of  the  Prophets  is  due  the  conception 
of  a  national  God.  To  the  Prophets  the  world  owes  the 
first  conception  of  a  purely  ethical  monotheism.  For,  feel- 
ing their  way,  they  passed  from  lower  to  higher  imaginings, 
until  they  raised  Yahweh  to  the  position  of  God.  It  was 
indeed  a  new  and  startling  thought  that,  as  a  moral  Lord, 
Yahweh  might  forsake  his  own  people  and  become  the  God 
of  all  nations,  in  the  interest  of  the  world's  ethical  advance. 
Amos  the  moralist  in  the  middle  of  the  eighth  century  pro- 
claims that  Yahweh  is  not  necessarily  bound  to  Israel  (ix. 
7).  This  Prophet  was  the  first  to  strike  the  note  of  mono- 
theism, though  the  idea  was  not  formulated  till  much  later. 
Nor  was  it  thought  at  first  that  Yahweh's  activity  embraced 


432  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

all  nations  (an  idea  first  expressed  in  Jeremiah  and  the 
Second  Isaiah).  The  monotheistic  ideal  did  not  arise  as 
the  result  of  a  "  narrow  exclusiveness,"  but  was  implicit  in 
the  inspired  call  and  grew  stronger  with  each  succeeding 
prophet. 

The  religion  of  the  Prophets  is  national-ethical;  it  prac- 
tically substitutes  morality  for  cult :  "  I  despise  your 
feasts,  I  do  not  want  your  sacrificial  gifts.  I  will  not  hear 
your  songs  and  harps"  (Amos  v.  2if.).  "I  desire  mercy 
not  sacrifice"  (Hosea  vi.  6)  ;  "I  have  no  delight  in  sacri- 
fice ...  I  cannot  endure  the  feasts  of  the  new  and  full 
moon"  (Is.  i.  rof).  Yet  Isaiah  recognized  the  necessity  of 
formal  worship,  only  he  would  have  a  purified  cult.  Inci- 
dentally, the  Prophets'  religion,  particularly  Isaiah's  utter- 
ances, had  the  efTect  of  converting  the  previous  idea  of  God 
as  national  warrior-king  or  a  Baal-Yahweh  into  that  of  the 
mysterious  Holy  One  whose  tabernacle  (temple)  was  now 
the  centre  of  holiness  in  a  city  of  God  (Jerusalem,  the  holy, 
hence  indestructible;  cf.  Is.  xxxi.  5;  2  Kg.  xix.). 

The  Prophets  broadened  religion  in  two  ways.  Espe- 
cially Jeremiah  made  of  Yahweh  more  than  a  national  god 
and  at  the  same  time  made  religion  an  individual  matter ; 
setting  the  individual  against  the  state.  Yahweh  supports 
the  righteous  man.  The  individual,  of  whatever  nation,  if 
righteous,  is  saved  by  Yahweh,  whose  mercy  is  extended  to 
all  nations.  The  political  outlook  doubtless  suggested  this 
attitude.  The  material  world-power  of  Assyria  is  reflected 
in  the  spiritual  world;  Yahweh  rules  Assyria  as  well  as 
Canaan.1  God  uses  other  nations  at  first  as  a  means  of 
punishing  Israel,  but  then  with  enlarged  vision  it  is  seen 
that  Yahweh  is  god  of  these  nations  as  of  Canaan.  Amos 
(c.  750)  foresees  a  national  disaster;  he  is  a  despairing 
prophet  of  woe.  Fifteen  years  later  Hosea,  the  "  prophet 
of  love,"  dares  to  hope  that  after  this  severe  affliction  at 
the  hand  of  the  Assyrian  God  will  show  mercy  to  a  puri- 
fied Israel.  This  is  the  first  vague  premonition  of  a  coming 

1  Compare  Jer.  xvii.  10  and  Deutero-Is.  xlii.  1-6;  xlix.  6;  Hi.  10. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  433 

kingdom  of  God.  Isaiah,  the  prophet  of  hopeful  belief, 
who  saw  Israel  overthrown  and  dispersed  by  Sargon  of 
Assyria  and  Sennacherib,  believes  that  a  "  remnant  will 
return,"  ruled  by  a  blameless  king  governing  all  people. 
To  him  Israelites  are  not  qua  Israelites  the  people  of  God. 
Jeremiah  definitely  separated  patriotism  and  religion.  He 
and  Ezekiel  (died  circa  572  B.C.),  the  one  in  Judaea  the 
other  in  Babylon,  taught  the  futility  not  of  hope  but  of 
political  expectations.  Israel  must  remain,  yet  not  as  a  state, 
but  as  a  congregation  of  the  Lord. 

A  distinction  has  been  made  above  between  the  sooth- 
sayer and  the  prophet,  but  it  must  be  pointed  out  also  that 
the  prophetic  vision  varies  in  different  periods.  The  mys- 
ticism of  the  "  howling  Dervish  "  type  of  dancing,  babbling, 
noisy  soothsayer  is  first  replaced  by  the  inspiration  of  Amos 
and  other  "  writing  prophets,"  who  feel  the  call  or  the  hand 
of  Yahweh  or  see  a  vision,1  and  speak  in  his  name,  often 
in  his  very  words.  The  first  class  is  shamanistic;  its  rep- 
resentatives are  supernatural,  qua  ecstatic,  beings,  magicians. 
The  second  class  is  a  band  of  sober  but  inspired  writers, 
pretending  to  no  powers  save  the  word  they  speak  for  God. 
The  later  Prophets,  beginning  with  Daniel,  make  a  third 
class.  They  have  dreams  and  in  trances  see  the  future 
after  a  period  of  fasting.  This  still  later  became  a  mere 
literary  form).2  They  also  speak  under  angelic  dictation 
and  at  times  hide  behind  the  names  of  older  Prophets. 

Jeremiah,  the  greatest  of  the  Prophets  if  measured  by 
breadth  and  depth,  bridges  the  gap  between  prophetic  and 
legal  religion.  His  prophetic  utterances  began  only  a  few 
years  before  the  discovery  of  the  Deuteronomic  code.  This 
code,  based  on  the  Book  of  the  Covenant,  contained  in  Ex. 
xx-xxiii.  was  dramatically  "  found "  and  established  as 

1  Compare  the  vision  of  Isaiah   (vi),  but  not  in  consequence  of 
a  trance,  rather  as  Paul  saw  his  vision.     Ezekiel  is  even  forced  to 
speak  against  his  will,  as  if  hypnotized.     Hosea  has  no  vision  at  all. 

2  Modern  interpreters   of  prophetic  phenomena  either  stress  the 
ecstatic  side  of  prophetic  phenomena,  or  insist  that  the  great  proph- 
ets were  merely  rational  and  ethical  teachers. 


434  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  law  of  God  under  Josiah  (621  B.  c.  compare  the  story 
in  2  Kg.  xxii-xxiii.).  It  was  a  valiant  attempt  to  modern- 
ize antiquated  law.  Thus  it  prohibited  absolutely  the  for- 
mer "  high  places "  and  local  shrines,  permitted  by  the 
Book  of  the  Covenant.  No  shrines  save  that  at  Jerusalem 
were  now  recognized.  Later,  Ezekiel  made  their  priests  serv- 
ants of  the  Temple.  Also  some  older  features  of  the  law 
were  humanely  modified  and  the  cultus  was  purified,  but 
by  this  code  it  was  now  legally  established.  As  Isaiah  had 
seen,  a  religion  could  not  live  by  righteousness  alone ;  some 
cult  must  give  it,  as  the  soul,  the  body  necessary  for  its 
earthly  existence.  This  ceremonial  side  was  over-empha- 
sized by  the  later  post-exilic  law,  embodied  in  Exodus,  Le- 
viticus, and  Numbers.  The  Law  of  Holiness  (Lev.  xvii- 
xxvi.),  which  was  formulated  about  500  B.C.,  probably  at 
Babylon,  thus  became  part  of  the  necessary  religion.  This 
trend  ended  by  making  religion  itself  a  question  of  legal 
technique  rather  than  of  inner  worth.1 

Jeremiah,  who  did  not  belong  to  the  Jerusalem  priest- 
hood, says  that  the  law  was  made  in  vain.  He  demands 
change  of  heart  not  of  form.  In  truth  the  legal  ceremonies 
which  annulled  the  inwardness  of  religion  soon  became  a 
weariness  (Malachi  i.  13),  while  they  certainly  deadened 
~the  spirit,  though  later  Jews  could  still  feel  this  spirit  and 

1  From  the  death  of  Josiah  at  Megiddo  in  608  B.  c.  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  priestly  code  political  circumstances  made  a  potent 
factor  in  religions  development.  Jerusalem  lay  at  the  mercy  of 
Egypt  till  Nebuchadrezzar  in  604  B.  c.  carried  off  many  of  the  in- 
habitants of  the  Holy  City,  finally  burning  the  Temple  (597-586). 
The  Exile  lasted  till  536,  when  Cyrus  permitted  some  forty  thou- 
sand Jews  to  return,  who  rebuilt  the  Temple  twenty  years  later. 
Under  Nehemiah  (c.  444)  the  city  walls  were  restored.  It  was  not 
till  after  this  Exile  that  the  Pentateuch  was  compiled  (c.  400  B.C.), 
while  the  final  form  of  Chronicles  and  of  the  prophetic  writings  may 
not  be  older  than  the  third  century.  The  Hagiographa,  or  other 
sacred  writings  besides  the  Law,  Histories,  and  the  Prophets,  are 
post-exilic,  in  part  even  of  the  Greek  period  (e.  g.  Zechariah,  c.  250 
B.C.;  Ruth  and  Daniel,  circa  164  B.C.).  To  the  second  century  B.C. 
belongs  a  mass  of  apocalyptic  writing,  attributed  to  Enoch,  Baruch, 
Daniel,  Solomon,  etc.  The  Song  of  vSolomon  and  Ecclesiastes  were 
not  accepted  as  part  of  the  canon  till  the  second  century  A.  D. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  435 

voice  it  magnificently,  as  in  the  Psalms.  Yet  in  general  the 
Priestly  Code  led  to  the  legalism  of  the  Talmud.  The  code 
was  ratified  by  a  formal  covenant  which  was  never  abro- 
gated. Nobles  and  priests  as  well  as  Nehemiah  were  sig- 
natories. It  was  a  state  document  which  might  well  have 
suppressed  all  further  religious  development.  It  is,  in  fact, 
often  said  that  future  centuries  added  to  religion  a  philo- 
sophic theology  and  a  mass  of  legal  interpretation,  but  that 
the  upward  course  of  the  religion  stopped  in  the  fifth  cen- 
tury B.  c.1  It  is  true  that  from  this  time  onward  theology 
rested  on  the  assumption  that  Yahweh  had  gradually  re- 
vealed both  himself  (as  Elohim,  El  Shaddai,  and  Yahweh) 
and  his  will,  till  Moses  received  the  final  exposition,  and 
that  Israel  had  been  assigned  by  Yahweh  a  permanent  priv- 
ileged position.  All  change  in  faith  or  form  now  became 
taboo.  Prophets  became  pretentious  and  were  no  longer 
tolerated;  they  gave  place  to  the  Scribes,  who  from  the 
fifth  century  became  transmitters  of  the  law.  For  the  mass 
of  returned  Jews,  these  scholars  preserved  a  purified  reli- 
gion which  without  them  had  probably  been  submerged 
among  the  still  active  local  cults.  Yet  the  Scribes  and 
Rabbis  did  more  than  preserve.  The  Talmud  (300  B.  c.  to 
500  A.  D.)  shows  a  constant  growth  in  practical  religion,  a 
broader  outlook,  a  more  modern  conception  of  the  relation 
between  religious  and  social  life.  It  is  really  in  the  suc- 
ceeding centuries  after  the  Exile  that  Judaism  leads  to  the 
ideals  associated,  perhaps  too  exclusively,  with  the  daughter- 
religion  of  Christ,  which  it  must  not  be  forgotten  began  as 
a  form  of  Judaism. 

The  Temple  at  Jerusalem,  where  alone  sacrifice  was  of- 
fered, was  served  by  a  horde  of  priests  (20,000  in  later 

1  For  the  formal  covenant,  see  Neh.  x.  29.  Ezra,  who  brought 
the  Priestly  code  f  ram  Babylon  c.  458  B.  c.,  is  recognized  as  the 
founder  of  Jewish  theology,  as  Nehemiah  (thirteen  years  later)  was 
the  founder  of  the  church.  Their  reform  was  the  logical  continua- 
tion of  the  work  of  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  a  century  and  a  half 
earlier.  A  similar  covenant  was  made  when  Josiah  promulgated 
the  law. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

days),  hereditary  officers,  supposed  to  be  descendants  of 
Aaron.  These  in  turn  were  served  by  the  Levites,  those 
given  to  Aaron,  divided  into  twenty-four  classes,  who 
were  merely  servants  of  the  priests.  The  Levites  might 
not  officiate  at  the  altar  nor  enter  the  inner  sanctuary,  but 
acted  as  slaughterers  of  victims,  door-keepers,  and  perform- 
ers of  other  menial  offices.  They  are  supposed  to  have  been 
originally  the  Jewish  priests  of  the  converted  local  shrines, 
who,  when  the  shrines  were  discontinued,  came  to  Jerusalem, 
where  they  were  at  first  authorized  to  continue  their  serv- 
ices (Deut.  xviii.  6-8).  But,  being  unacceptable  to  the 
city  priests  (2  Kg.  xxiii.  9),  they  became  mere  servants  of 
the  Temple  (Ezek.  xliv.  n).1  After  Solomon,  the  Zado- 
kites  (i  Kg.  ii.  27-35;  Ezek.  xliv.  15)  became  the  only  real 
priests,  whose  name  may  be  preserved  as  Sadducees.  Under 
the  High  Priest  (Zech.  iii.  8)  were  soldiers  of  the  Tem- 
ple, who  guarded  all  the  treasure  stored  therein.  The 
priests  as  a  class  had  the  income  of  the  Temple,  represented 
by  cash,  first  fruits,  a  share  of  sacrifices  and  bread.  Only 
the  burnt  offerings  were  entirely  consumed  and  even  of 
these  the  priests  took  the  skins.  Meal-offerings,  sin-offer- 
ings, guilt-offerings  became  fees  paid  to  the  priest  and  his 
underling  the  Levite.  This  resulted  in  an  enormous  in- 
come, since,  besides  other  services,  vast  multitudes  flocked 
to  Jerusalem  to  celebrate  the  three  great  festivals,  Passover, 
Pentecost,  and  Feast  of  the  Tabernacles.  The  priests  were 
in  fact  the  plutocracy  as  well  as  the  aristocracy  of  Jerusa- 
lem. They  formed  a  sort  of  caste  and  had  all  a  Brahman's 
scorn  for  common  Jews.  They  had  nothing  to  do  but  per- 
form services  and  adorn  themselves.  Religious  instruction 
was  no  part  of  their  duty. 

The  customary  offering  was  the  burnt-offering,  to  express 
devotion.  The  Sin-  and  Guilt-offerings  became  flesh  for 
the  priests  to  eat,  only  the  fat  being  consumed.  The  Peace- 
offering,  for  temporal  blessings  or  to  express  gratitude, 

1  According  to  Num.  iii.  6  and  xviii.  6  they  were  appointed  by 
Moses. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  437 

was  also  a  source  of  income  to  the  priests,  as  in  this  case, 
too,  only  the  fat  was  burned.  Besides  these  three  kinds  of 
sacrifices  were  the  unbloody  sacrifices,  of  little  account; 
they  were  added  to  the  burnt  bloody  sacrifices.  The  daily 
burnt  offering  was  a  public  sacrifice  of  an  unblemished 
lamb,  offered  at  daybreak  and  in  the  afternoon.  On  high 
festival  days  and  especially  on  the  Day  of  Atonement  there 
was  an  elaborate  ritual.  Psalms  iii-xli.  were  composed 
after  the  Exile  for  the  liturgy  ;  also  instrumental  music  made 
part  of  the  daily  service  (2  Chron.  xxix.  28).  Solomon's 
temple  had  wooden  and  metal  figures  (Cherubim,  i  Kg.  vi- 
vii.)  made  by  Hiram  of  Tyre;  but  figures  were  discontinued 
from  the  time  of  Josiah.  The  later  Temple  was  a  great 
structure  of  cedar  and  marble,  faced  with  gold  plate.  It 
had  an  outer  court  and  a  holy  place,  part  of  which  made 
the  Holy  of  Holies,  an  empty  room  entered  by  the  High 
Priest  once  yearly  on  the  Day  of  Atonement.1  This  Tem- 
ple was  destroyed  with  the  city  under  Titus,  70  A.  D.  Other 
temples  existed  outside  of  Palestine,  but  only  that  at  Jeru- 
salem was  recognized  by  the  nation  at  large.  Toward  this 
Temple,  the  shrine  of  their  God  and  of  their  hopes,  the 
faithful  Jews  abroad  turned  in  prayer,  as  did  at  first  the 
Mohammedans. 

The  new  Jewish  religion,  as  it  may  be  called  in  antithesis 
to  the  pre-exilic  Hebraic  religion,  of  the  early  law  and 
Prophets,  was  centred  round  the  Temple  as  rebuilt  in  516 
B.  c.  By  concentrating  the  cult  it  suppressed  definitively 
all  remnants  of  clan  and  family  worship,  as  it  substituted 
a  formal  and  limited  priesthood  for  the  quondam  local  min- 
isters. So  long  as  any  rock  might  serve  as  an  altar,  any 
father  of  a  family  might  make  sacrifice  anywhere.  Re- 
strictions at  first  had  to  do  chiefly  with  the  manner  of  sac- 
rificing. One  must  not  seethe  the  kid  in  its  mother's  milk  ; 
one  must  not  let  blood  flow  from  the  sacrifice  to  the  ground 


Day  of  Atonement  (Lev.  xvi.)  was  a  late  addition  to  the 
cult,  though  retaining  the  scape-goat.  It  was  instituted  to  cleanse 
people  and  temple  of  all  defilement.  For  details  of  the  Temple, 
compare  Josephus,  Wars  of  the  Jews,  v.  5,  5. 


438  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

(as  it  would  go  to  the  ghost  rather  than  to  Yahweh),  etc. 
Now,  however,  all  sacrifice  was  prohibited  apart  from  the 
Temple,  where  Yahweh  was  (Hab.  ii.  20).  The  peasant 
who  dwelt  afar  had  to  sell  his  victim  at  home  and  with 
the  proceeds  buy  another  sacrificed  at  Jerusalem.  The 
movable  feast  adopted  from  the  Canaanite  became  Yahweh 
celebrations  on  fixed  dates  at  Jerusalem.  Harvest  cele- 
brated the  "  Exodus,"  the  Feast  of  Weeks  celebrated  the 
"  giving  of  the  law  on  Sinai."  *  Thus  the  Jews  converted 
nature-feasts  into  national  praise  of  Yahweh. 

After  the  Exile,  fasting,  the  rite  of  circumcision,  and  the 
observance  of  the  Sabbath  attained  a  prominence  unknown 
before.  In  exile  they  were  the  badge  of  faith;  thereafter 
they  remained  a  proof  of  devotion  and  a  means  of  salva- 
tion. Isaiah  (third?)  even  says  that  eunuchs  and  strangers 
are  blessed  for  keeping  the  Sabbath  (Ivi.  1-8).  Ezekiel, 
who  may  have  been  the  first  to  substitute  a  weekly  Sabbath 
for  the  full-moon  day,  lays  especial  stress  on  this  formal- 
ity.2 

More  important  were  the  changes  of  belief.  From  the 
time  when  the  Jews  came  into  close  contact  with  Babylon 
and  Persia  new  spiritual  powers  became  prominent.  Every 
nation  was  now  thought  to  have  its  guardian  angel.  Sun- 
dry spirits  as  ministers  had  originally  served  God,  some 
of  whom  were  giants  or  Bene  Elohim,  "  sons  of  God " 
(compare  the  strange  old  tradition  in  Gen.  vi.).  One  of 
these  sons  (Job  i.  6)  had  the  office  of  accusing  men  of  sins. 
As  such  he  became  an  adversary  (Zech.  iii.  i)  and  tempted 
men  to  sin  (i  Chron.  xxi.  i),  thus  appearing  as  God's 

1  For  the  dates  of  the  Passover,  Mazzoth  (beginning  of  harvest), 
Pentecost  (the  Feast  of  Weeks),  and  of  the  Tabernacle,  see  Deut. 
xvi ;  Lev.  xxiii ;  Num.  xxviiif.  These  were  already  the  Great 
Festivals  of  the  Jews.  After  the  fall  of  the  Temple,  the  three  great 
festivals,  which  began  as  nature-festivals  and  were  retained  as 
pilgrim-feasts,  were  continued  as  seasonal  celebrations  in  spring, 
summer,  and  autumn,  but  designated  as  feasts  of  Freedom,  Law,  and 
Joy,  a  generalized  interpretation. 

2Ezek.  xx.  12;  xxiii.  38  and  xlvi.  i;  compare  Jer.  xvii.  27.  The 
Priestly  Code  of  course  derived  the  Sabbath  and  circumcision  from 
creation  and  Abraham. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  439 

enemy,  in  which  role  he  became  the  post-exilic  Satan  and 
was  identified  with  the  ancient  foes  of  God,  such  as  Chaos, 
Rahab  and  the  Dragon  (Is.  li.  9).  In  the  older  belief,  God 
himself  creates  evil  (Is.  xlv.  7).  The  idea  of  a  world- 
power  of  evil  is  Persian.  Its  logical  implication  in  the  Sem- 
itic myth  of  creation  finds  full  and  forcible  expression  in 
the  post-exilic  apocalypses  of  the  second  century  B.  c. 

Ezekiel  especially  tells  of  many  spirits,  some  of  whom 
may  be  Babylonian  gods.  God  is  surrounded  with  a  court 
of  angels  and  spirits,  in  part  his  "  sons,"  in  part  half-human 
forms  of  old  nature-powers.  Thus  the  spirits  of  cloud  and 
lightning  appear  as  winged  Cherubim,  whose  office  is  to 
carry  the  Lord  or  otherwise  to  act  as  guardians.1  Instead 
of  God  or  a  divine  hypostasis  of  God's  angel  or  face,  real 
angels,  intermediaries,  now  speak  for  God  to  men  (Daniel 
and  Zechariah).  Raphael,  Michael,  patron  of  the  Jews, 
and  Gabriel,  warrior  and  revealer,  are  of  doubtful  origin ; 
Asmodeus  is  clearly  Persian.2  There  are  also  evil  angels 
who  inspire  false  statements  or  bring  disaster  (diseases) ; 
but  they  do  so  at  God's  command  (I  Kg.  xxii. ;  Ps.  Ixxviii. 
49).  All  these  beings  reflect  the  later  feeling  that  God 
is  remote  in  Heaven.  He  no  longer  talks  on  earth  with  men 
but  deals  with  them  through  ministers,  as  a  great  king  deals 
with  his  people. 

After  the  Exile  also  the  state  became  a  theocracy.  All 
power  was  in  the  hands  of  the  priests.  The  High  Priest 
was  virtually  a  ruler,  as  the  Maccabean  ruler  (of  priestly 

1The  Cherub  is  thought  by  some  scholars  to  have  been  the 
Hittite  griffin.  But  he  seems  to  be  only  the  anthropomorphized 
form  of  storm-cloud  and  lightning.  In  Heaven  and  in  the  Temple 
Yahweh  is  upheld  by  a  Cherub  or  Cherubim-car  (Ps.  xviii.  91. ;  civ. 
3-4).  Cf.  Gen.  iii.  27.  The  Cherub  is  later  differentiated  from  the 
Seraph :  "  The  Cherub  knows  more ;  the  Seraph  loves  more." 

2  The  seven  archangels  described  in  Enoch  (xx)  are:  Raphael 
as  lord  of  spirits  of  men,  Michael  (as  above),  Gabriel  as  lord  of 
Paradise,  serpents,  and  Cherubim,  Uriel  "over  the  world  and  Tar- 
tarus," Raquel  who  "  takes  vengeance  on  the  luminaries "  (i.  e. 
planetary  spirits),  Saraqael  who  is  "over  spirits  that  sin  spiritually," 
and  Remiel,  "over  those  who  rise."  Azazel  (ib.  x)  sinned  through 
teaching  men  the  use  of  arms  and  other  mysteries  of  heaven. 


440  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

family)  actually  became  qua  ruler  the  High  Priest.  There 
was,  however,  no  attempt  to  imitate  the  royal  freedom  of 
Solomon.  Monogamy  became  Jewish  law. 

Intercourse  with  the  Greeks  began  in  the  fourth  century 
B.  c.  From  320  to  198  B.  c.  Palestine  was  under  Egyptian 
rule,  thereafter  under  that  of  Syria,  till  Rome  became  her 
master  (63  B.C.).  Meantime  Jewish  colonies  had  spread 
westward  as  well  as  eastward  and  Alexandria  had  become 
the  centre  of  the  dispersed,  who  built  temples  elsewhere, 
though  remaining  tributary  to  the  Temple.  Hebrew  was 
retained  as  a  holy  language,  but  it  was  popularly  ousted  by 
Aramaic ;  Greek  became  a  second  biblical  language.  Greek 
writings  like  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon  enriched  Jewish  liter- 
ature; the  Torah  was  translated  into  Greek  in  the  third 
century.  The  Septuagint  (seventy  scholars  translated  it?) 
became  the  book  of  the  dispersed  Jews  (c.  250  B.  c.),  till  its 
adoption  by  Christians  caused  Jews  to  repudiate  it. 

This  Hellenistic  Judaism  lost  none  of  its  native  com- 
placency. It  claimed  all  the  world's  wisdom  as  originally 
its  own.  The  Jews  said  the  Greeks  had  learned  all  they 
knew  from  Moses.  A  mass  of  apocryphal  literature  sup- 
ported the  unblushing  propaganda  and  did  much  to  make 
the  Jews  disliked  abroad,  where  their  exclusiveness  also 
made  them  unpopular.1  In  mediaeval  Europe  the  legend 
of  philosophy  being  derived  from  Moses  still  sanctioned 
the  philosophic  interpretation  of  religion  after  orthodox 
Christianity  closed  the  Greek  schools  in  529  A.  D. 

Greece  gave  her  philosophy  to  the  Jews.  Thence  came 
the  idea  of  divine  Wisdom  and  of  God  as  working  through 
Powers  and  Ideas.  This  the  transcendent  God  of  Israel, 
who  by  a  word  or  by  brooding  created  an  orderly  world  out 
of  chaotic  matter,  never  did,  though  the  later  angels  of 
Persia  helped  to  make  familiar  the  idea  of  intermediaries. 

1  In  Alexandria  they  claimed  the  privilege  of  living  apart  in  a 
quarter  of  their  own,  that  they  might  not  be  contaminated  by  the 
natives.  The  natives  did  not  like  this  and  rejoiced  to  kill  them  when 
permitted  to  do  so. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  441 

Philo,  about  the  time  of  the  Christian  era,  is  "  Judaeus," 
but  more  Greek  than  Jew.  Yet  his  Neo-Platonism  had  more 
effect  upon  Christianity  than  upon  Judaeism,  which,  withal 
rather  late,  as  already  explained,  does  attain  to  the  idea  of 
a  creative  universal  God,  but  rests  more  contentedly  in  the 
thought  of  Yahweh  as  patron  deity  of  the  Jews,  ever  inter- 
vening directly  in  their  behalf  ;  as  he  directly  (without  Logos 
or  dynameis)  created  heaven  and  earth.  This  is  a  concep- 
tion suited  to  the  concrete  thought,  averse  from  abstrac- 
tions, characteristic  of  all  Semites,  from  Moses  to  Mo- 
hammed. The  newer  conceptions  appealed  only  to  those 
Jews  who  had  been  imbued  with  Hellenistic  thought. 

The  most  important  of  these  newer  ideas,  however,  was 
native.  Hosea  in  the  eighth  century  foresaw  a  future 
reconciliation  between  Yahweh  and  Israel;  Isaiah  looked 
for  a  reign  of  justice;1  Jeremiah  imagined  a  saving  rem- 
nant under  a  son  of  David ;  Ezekiel  pictured  religious  Jews 
living  round  the  Temple  untroubled  by  Gentiles;  and  Deu- 
tero-Isaiah  even  included  the  Gentiles  as  partakers  of  this 
felicity.  Finally  Zechariah  (ix.  9-10)  or  perhaps  a  Deu- 
tero-Zechariah,  describes  the  Messianic  king.  The  advent 
of  this  Messiah,  at  first  near,  in  seventy  years,  is  postponed, 
for  seven  times  seventy  years,  as  he  fails  to  appear.  He  is 
not  at  first  divine,  but  a  king,  yet  endowed  with  superhuman 
attributes;  then  he  becomes  the  "heavenly  man"  (Ps.  of 
Solomon  and  Enoch,  125  B.  c.)  There  will  be  a  great  strug- 
gle with  evil,  an  idea  strengthened  by  apocalyptic  writers 
who  drew  on  Babylonian  myths.  Then  the  Messiah  will 
bring  earthly  prosperity.  As  such,  he  was  expected  till  the 
time  of  Hadrian,  when  Bar  Cocheba  appeared  in  this  role 
and  was  accepted  as  Messiah  by  the  Jewish  priesthood. 

1  Isaiah's  visions  date  from  735  to  691  B.  c.  On  pre-exilic  Messianic 
hope,  see  Barton  Journal  of  Biblical  Literature,  xxxiii.  68f.  Marti, 
op.  cit.,  p.  214,  gives  a  list  of  Messianic  passages  supposed  to  have 
been  inserted  into  the  prophetic  documents  (Amos  ix.  13-15 ;  Hosea 
ii.  23;  Micah  iv.  4;  Is.  ix.  2-6;  etc.).  There  seems  to  be  no  cogent 
reason,  however,  for  supposing  that  the  Messiah  idea  is  wholly 
post-exilic.  Is.  xlv.  I  regards  Cyrus  as  the  anointed  Messiah,  who 
is  to  save  Israel. 


442  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Hope  of  happiness  hereafter  for  the  people  was  grad- 
ually united  with  the  hope  of  individual  happiness  after 
death.  Like  other  Semites,  the  old  Hebrews  believed 
vaguely  in  a  future  life,  not  for  the  soul  or  breath  of  God, 
which  at  death  returned  to  its  source,  but  for  the  animal 
life  which  lingers  in  the  grave,  Sheol,  and  is  not  without 
intelligence,  as  is  shown  when  Samuel  as  a  power,  elohim, 
rises  oracularly  from  the  grave.  The  Lord  bringeth  down 
to  Sheol  and  bringeth  up  (i  Sam.  ii.  6).  Yet  ghosts  were 
really  outside  of  God's  dominion  and  to  attribute  an  immor- 
tal soul  to  a  man  would  have  been  thought  as  impious  as 
absurd.  Only  those  really  lived  hereafter  who  by  God's 
special  favour  were  caught  up  and  carried  away  bodily, 
like  Moses,  Elijah,  and  Enoch.  Men  in  general  had  no 
bodily  resurrection  and  no  spiritual  hope  beyond  the  grave. 
Peace  in  the  tomb,  where  the  ghost  lived  as  a  shade,  was  all 
a  man  expected.  "  Shall  a  man  deliver  his  soul  from  the 
hand  of  the  grave?"  asks  a  Psalmist  (Ixxxix.  48).  "In 
death,"  says  another,  "  there  is  no  remembrance  of  God  " 
(Ps.  vi.  5;  cf.  Is.  xiv.  gf..;  Ezek.  xxxii.  22f.). 

But  the  Zoroastrian  idea,  that  those  soldiers  of  God  who 
sleep  in  the  dust  shall  awake  to  share  in  the  happiness  of 
the  purified  world,  was  one  to  appeal  to  the  Jew  who  had 
learned  to  look  for  the  coming  of  a  Messiah.  In  the  second 
century  B.  c.  (Daniel  xii.  1-3)  this  thought  is  expressed  in 
a  modified  form,  "  some  shall  awake."  Yet  the  idea  of  a 
resurrection  was  never  thoroughly  Jewish.  The  soul  itself 
as  a  psyche  may  have  been  taken  from  Greece.  The  Jewish 
priesthood,  represented  by  the  Sadducees,  rejected  the  resur- 
rection, as  did  the  Samaritans,  and  it  is  absent  from  the 
genuinely  Jewish  thought  found  in  Tobit,  Baruch  (disciple 
of  Jeremiah),  and  the  Maccabees.  It  was  a  belief  adopted 
by  the  Pharisees,  possibly,  as  already  explained  from  Zoro- 
astrianism.  For  neither  universal  resurrection  nor  a  final 
judgment  belonged  to  early  Israelitish  belief.  Ezekiel's 
eschatology  (xxxvii.  nf.)  was  built  upon  the  new  idea  of 
resurrection;  even  later  was  the  belief  that  man  had  an 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  443 

immortal  soul.1  The  Sadducean  belief  of  the  second  cen- 
tury B.  c.,  as  voiced  by  Ben  Sira,  is  that  the  dead  "  has  no 
hope  "  (xxxviii.  21). 

The  later  religion  under  Persian  and  Greek  influence 
brought  forth  its  optimists  and  pessimists,  Job,  c.  400  B.  c., 
and  Ecclesiastes,  c.  200  B.  c. ;  also  a  philosophy  of  life 
neither  strongly  optimistic  nor  pessimistic,  the  Wisdom  of 
Solomon  and  of  Ben  Sira,  Ecclesiasticus,  c.  i8o.2  In- 
creasing individuality,  as  well  as  freedom  from  the  law 
(as  in  Job),  marked  the  progress  of  this  phase  of  religion, 
which  is  voiced  in  many  of  the  late  Psalms.3  With  the 
advent  of  a  State  whose  head  pretended  to  be  also  High 
Priest  (second  century  B.  c.),  the  church  itself  became  mili- 
tant and  began  to  suffer  from  the  strife  of  contending 
parties,  whose  differences  were  partly  political  and  partly 
religious. 

The  first  division  of  the  church,  however,  occurred  earlier, 
perhaps  in  the  fifth  century.  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  had  rec- 
ommended that  true  Israelites  should  repudiate  their  for- 
eign wives.  This  did  not  please  the  Samaritans,  who  seceded 
from  the  Temple  and  took  as  their  sanctuary  Shechem 
(Mount  Gerizim).  These  protestants  accepted  neither  the 
canonicity  of  the  Prophets  nor  the  Hagiographa  and,  as 
just  stated,  they  rejected  the  novel  doctrine  of  the  resur- 

1  Compare  Is.  xxvi.  19;  xiv.  pf. ;  Job  xix.  251.     Sheol  in  Job  iii. 
17  is  a  place  where  the  weary  may  rest.     Ps.  Ixxiii.  24  speaks  of 
man  being  received  into  heaven  in  glory  and  ib.  xlix.  15,  xvi.  iof., 
xvii.  15  express  belief  in  a  bodily  resurrection.     Daniel    (loc.  cit.) 
speaks  of  eternal  shame  as  the  lot  of  sinners;    (Trito-)  Isaiah  de- 
scribes the  fate  of  the  damned,  whose  worm  dieth  not  and  whose 
fire  is  not  quenched  (Ixvi.  23f.).    Later  Judaism  accepted  the  idea 
of  a   purgatory  tut  in   general   it  spiritualized   the   life   hereafter, 
though  retaining  belief  in  the  Judgment. 

2  Here   first   appears   a   discussion   of  the   problem   of   free  will. 
Ben  Sira   xv  emphatically  rejects  the  idea  of  determinism.     Texts 
of  the  OT  support  both  views,  for  the  early  Hebrews  had  not  yet 
raised  the  question. 

3  The  Psalter  for  liturgical  use  consists  of  iii-xli,  to  which  were 
later  added  the  books  xlii-lxxiii  and  Ixxxiv-lxxxix,  the  latter  sup- 
posed to  express  patriotic  enthusiasm  incidental  to  Persian  tyranny 
in  the  fourth  century  B.  c. 


444  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

rection.  Their  temple,  destroyed  in  120  B.  c.,  may  have 
been  erected  by  that  rival  of  Nehemiah,  Sanballat,  whose 
son-in-law  had  been  ejected  from  the  Temple  (Neh.  xiii. 
28).  Samaria  had  long  before  been  depopulated  by  As- 
syria and  probably  in  the  fifth  century  the  Samaritans  were 
not  pure  Israelites.  They  represented  a  ritualistic  mono- 
theism and  regarded  as  canonical  only  the  hexateuch;  but 
their  "  Joshua  "  is  not  that  of  the  Bible. 

The  inner  strife  at  Jerusalem  was  based  on  tendencies 
long  operative  but  not  productive  of  classes  officially  recog- 
nized till  they  became  incorporate  in  the  persons  of  the 
Sadducees  and  Pharisees,  whom  with  the  Essenes  Josephus 
calls  the  "  three  philosophical  sects "  of  the  Jews.  The 
Sadducees  were  the  priestly  aristocratic  party,  composed, 
however,  of  diplomats  and  soldiers  as  well  as  of  priests. 
They  represented  political  ambition  and  foreign  ways  but 
not  ideas.  The  Pharisees  were  a  comparatively  small  body 
of  "  separatist "  Puritans,  successors  of  those  called  Assi- 
deans  or  Holy  Ones,  who  were  indifferent  to  the  success  of 
State  politics  but  intent  on  the  operation  of  religious  require- 
ments. Like  all  purists  they  looked  with  scorn  on  the 
common  people  as  unclean  (John  vii.  49).  They  were,  as 
regards  ideas,  liberal,  though  respected  more  as  religious 
guides  than  as  national  leaders.  They  were  a  party  not  a 
class,  while  the  Sadducees  were  a  class  rather  than  a  party. 
The  first  actual  rupture  between  Sadducees  and  Pharisees 
occurred  toward  the  end  of  the  reign  of  John  Hyrcanus  in 
the  second  century  B.  c.,  when  the  Pharisees  as  strict  legal- 
ists opposed  the  Asmoneans  because  the  Maccabees  assumed 
(illegally)  the  high  priesthood.  To  understand  the  dispute 
it  will  be  necessary  to  recall  the  history  of  the  Jews  imme- 
diately preceding. 

In  1 68  B.  c.  Antiochus  Epiphanes  of  Syria  had  insulted 
and  outraged  the  Jews,  even  going  so  far  as  to  dedicate  the 
Temple  at  Jerusalem  to  Zeus.  Judas  Maccabee,  the  son 
of  the  Asmonean  Matathias,  carried  out  a  successful  revolt 
and  after  three  years  the  Temple  was  purified  and  services 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  445 

were  renewed  (first  Feast  of  the  Temple,  165  B.C.).  The 
Pious  Ones  of  that  day,  though  devoted  to  their  deliverer, 
were  satisfied  with  religious  freedom.  But  Judas  and  his 
friends  (represented  by  the  aristocracy  or  Sadducees)  con- 
tinued the  struggle,1  getting  Roman  help.  Judas  was  suc- 
ceeded by  his  brother  Jonathan  (161-142  B.C.)  and  the 
latter  by  Simon  (142-135),  whose  son  John  Hyrcanus  (135- 
105)  was  an  object  of  suspicion  to  the  Pharisees,  pietists 
more  than  patriots,  because  he  paid  attention  to  the  good 
of  the  State  rather  than  to  the  good  of  religion.  The  Sad- 
ducees, on  the  other  hand,  supported  John  and  after  much 
trouble  including  murders  and  civil  war  the  Pharisees  lost 
their  power  and  the  Romans  annexed  Judaea  (63  B.C.).2 
Herod  the  Great,  who  was  more  a  Greek  politician  than 
king  of  the  Jews,  supported  the  Sadducees  and  was  opposed 
by  the  purists.  Yet  the  religious  conscience  of  the  people 
was  prevailingly  Pharisaical  and  in  the  end  the  Sadducees 
and  Maccabees  lost  ground  while  the  spirit  of  the  Pharisees 
steadily  gained.  They  were  less  conservative  than  the  Sad- 
ducees, who  denied  the  non-legal  doctrine  of  the  resurrec- 
tion and  the  popular  belief  in  angels  and  evil  spirits,  while 
the  Pharisees  had  adopted  all  these  novelties  (Acts  xxiii.). 
Josephus,  a  doubtful  authority,  says  that  the  Sadducees  de- 
nied the  influence  of  Fate,  to  which  the  Pharisees  allotted 
some  activity. 

1The  Sadducees  hoped  to  restore  David's  kingdom  by  force  of 
arms;  the  Pharisees  looked  for  the  advent  of  a  heavenly  Messiah 
and  did  not  favour  the  introduction  of  foreign  power  into  Judaea. 
The  Maccabees  revolted  as  Jews  against  Syrian  power  but  when 
they  had  established  their  own  kingdom  they  tried  to  maintain  it 
by  foreign  aid.  Hence  the  Pharisees  at  first  sided  with  the  Macca- 
bees and  then  renounced  them.  Jewish  expectations  during  the 
Maccabean  revolt  are  voiced  by  Daniel  and  Ps.  xc-cl,  representing 
the  beginning  and  end  of  the  revolt. 

2  On  this  date,  63-64  B.  c.,  Jerusalem  was  captured  by  Pompey, 
who  dared  to  enter  the  Holy  of  Holies.  The  Maccabean  monarchy 
ended  with  the  accession  of  Herod,  40  B.  c.  Herod  rebuilt  the 
Temple  (20  B.C.),  but  he  slew  those  who  cut  down  the  gold  eagles 
with  which  he  had  defiled  it.  He  also  built  a  temple  to  Apollo  and 
in  other  ways  showed  that  he  had  no  sympathy  with  Jewish  ideas. 


446  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

The  Essenes,  the  third  sect  mentioned  by  Josephus, 
formed  a  communistic  religious  order,  chiefly  celibate,  de- 
voted to  rules  of  peace  and  purity.  They  lived  in  monastic 
settlements  and  are  referred  to  as  early  as  150  B.  c.  They 
resembled  the  nomadic  Rechabites,  except  in  being  agricul- 
turists, but  their  principles  were  those  of  an  exaggerated 
Pharisaism  tinged  with  Greek  philosophy  (they  believed  in 
"a  pure  spirit,  immortal,  but  imprisoned  in  the  body"). 
They  had,  however,  their  own  scriptures  and  different 
classes  of  initiates.  They  scorned  the  Temple,  but  hon- 
oured Moses,  and  observed  the  Sabbath  very  strictly.  They 
fled  the  world,  and  did  not  proselytize.  They  were  prob- 
ably mystics  but  of  what  sort  we  cannot  tell.  Oaths,  except 
their  initiation-oath,  they  abhorred  and  taught  the  blessing 
of  poverty.1 

The  controlling  power  in  the  later  Jewish  government  was 
in  the  hands  of  a  senate,  Gerousia,  afterwards  called  the 
Sanhedrin,  a  council  headed  by  the  High  Priest.  After 
the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  the  Sanhedrin  met  at  Jabneh 
or  Jabneel  (Jamnia).  It  is  first  mentioned  in  the  time  of 
Antiochus  the  Great  (223-187  B.  c.).  This  board  had  con- 
trol over  all  the  local  councils;  it  gave  legal  decisions  and 
made  administrative  regulations.  It  also  had  spiritual  pow- 
ers and  had  jurisdiction  in  cases  of  blasphemy  and  other 
transgressions.  In  its  guard  was  the  oral  law,  which,  ac- 
cording to  tradition,  was  instituted  by  Moses  and  passed 
on  by  Joshua.  It  is  this  oral  law,  transmitted  by  Scribes 
and  Pharisees,  which  was  represented  at  the  time  of  the 
Christian  era  by  the  schools  of  Hillel  and  Shammai,  later 

1  See  Josephus,  Wars,  ii.  ch.  8 ;  also  W.  D.  Morrison,  The  Jews 
under  Roman  Rule,  London,  1890,  p.  346.  The  Essenes  show  no 
trace  of  Persian  or  Buddhist  origin  nor,  apparently,  did  they  influ- 
ence Christian  religion.  Other  Jewish  sects  are  chiefly  of  late 
growth,  such  as  the  mediaeval  Karaites  (eighth  century  A.  D.)  who 
opposed  tradition,  reverted  to  Essene  and  Sadducean  principles,  and 
adopted  from  the  Mohammedans  the  allegorical  method  of  interpre- 
tation; and  the  Dorsitheans,  who  were  a  sect  of  earlier  origin  con- 
nected with  the  Samaritans  and  active  in  the  second  century  A.  D. 
Another  sect  called  the  Falashas  were  also  a  late  Abyssinian  growth. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  447 

by  Gamaliel,  and  was  finally  committed  to  the  Talmud.1 
The  institution  which  more  than  anything  else  held  the 
Jews  together  during  the  Exile  and  after  the  destruction  of 
the  city  and  Temple  was  the  Synagogue.  It  was  a  house 
for  prayer  and  edification  erected  anywhere,  usually  near 
water  for  ablution,  and  was  preserved  and  exalted  by  the 
Scribes.  Like  the  Temple,  it  was  lighted  by  a  perpetual 
lamp,  but  its  other  furnishing  was  merely  a  reading-desk 
and  a  chest  of  law-scrolls.  Its  head  was  the  archisyna- 
gogos  or  Ruler  of  the  Synagogue,  usually  a  Scribe.  Open 
daily  or  at  least  thrice  a  week,  it  served  as  a  meeting-house 
of  prayer,  where  the  Scriptures  were  read  and  a  sort  of 
creed  ("  Hear,  O  Israel,"  etc.,  the  Shema,  Deut.  vi.  4f.) 
was  recited,  followed  by  a  lesson  from  the  Pentateuch, 
which  was  thus  read  through  every  three  years.  Seven 
men  conducted  the  service.  Hebrew  was  translated  into 
Aramaic,  to  be  "  understanded  of  the  people."  The  Proph- 
ets, as  less  sacred  than  the  Law,2  were  read  next  and  this 
lection  was  followed  by  a  lay  sermon,  at  which  point  the 
audience  might  discuss  or  dispute  any  point.  A  benedic- 
tion pronounced  by  a  priest  closed  the  meeting,  which  was 
evidently  the  model  of  the  later  Christian  church  service. 

This  service  kept  the  Jews  in  touch  with  the  vital  truths 
of  their  religion  and  gave  them  when  dispersed  a  sense  of 
religious  fellowship.  They  learned  in  the  Synagogue  the 
binding  rules  and  traditional  sayings  (Halaka  and  Agada) 
which,  built  up  into  a  mass  of  edifying  erudition^  unveiled 
all  mysteries,  explained  tradition,  and  became  the  volume 
of  legendary  lore  called  the  Midrash,  as  opposed  to  the 
legal  lore  preserved  in  the  Doctrine  or  Talmud.  The  Tal- 
mud is  divided  into  the  Hebrew  Mishnah  and  Aramaic 
Gemara,  that  is,  repetition  (instruction)  and  exposition,  re- 

1  The  two  schools  of  Hillel  and  Shammai  represented  liberal  and 
conservative  elements,  respectively.     In  general  the  former  accepted 
and  the  latter  opposed  Hellenism. 

2  The  Jews  generally  regarded  the  Law  as  more  sacred  than  other 
Scriptures.     But  by  the  time  of  the  Christian  era  Old  Testament 
writings  are  cited  (by  Christ  and  Paul)  as  if  equally  authoritative. 


448  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

spectively.  The  former  began  with  the  Scribes  and  was 
continued  by  the  Tenaim  or  doctors  in  the  second  century 
B.  c.  Their  writings  were  codified  about  two  hundred  A.  D., 
while  the  codification  of  the  Gemara  of  the  Amoraim  or 
Speakers  was  not  made,  for  the  Jerusalem  Talmud,  till  the 
fourth  century  and  not  till  the  fifth  or  sixth  century  for  the 
Babylonian  Talmud  —  a  huge  work  in  sixty-three  tracts, 
treating  of  agriculture,  festivals,  women,  civil  and  criminal 
laws  ("  damages  "),  sacrifices,  and  purifications.  The  Geo- 
nim  or  Rabbinical  teachers  of  Babylon  and  Egypt  continued 
to  fix  tradition  till  the  tenth  century  A.  D.  Thereafter  tra- 
dition passed  into  the  hands  of  European  Talmudic  com- 
mentators, such  as  Solomon  Bar  Isaac  of  France  and 
Abraham  Ibn  Ezra  of  Spain,  in  the  eleventh  and  twelfth 
centuries,  respectively.  In  the  eleventh  century,  Isaac  of 
Fez  (Alfasi)  wrote  a  guide  to  Talmudic  law  and  in  1180 
Maimonides  J  published  the  Jewish  code  called  the  Strong 
Hand.  Finally,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  Joseph  Caro  com- 
piled and  arranged  the  whole  law  under  which  orthodox 
Jews  still  live. 

In  regard  to  the  authority  of  Talmudic  tradition,  it  was 
accepted  by  all  except  the  Karaites,  who  held  as  authorita- 
tive only  the  words  of  the  Bible.  Unauthorized  beliefs  were 
held  nevertheless  by  the  later  Jews.  Thus  in  the  ninth  cen- 
tury a  number  of  Jews  believed  in  metempsychosis.  Mys- 
ticism came  strongly  to  the  fore  as  a  reaction  against  the 
legalistic  attitude  of  Maimonides  and  is  a  marked  feature 
of  mediaeval  Judaism.  Its  roots  may  be  found  in  early 
Jewish  sects  or  still  earlier  in  the  men  who  walked  with 
God  and  spoke  in  his  name.  Yet  on  the  whole  mysticism 
of  the  rapt  ecstatic  sort  was  not  Jewish,  as  it  was  not  Semi- 
tic. It  tended  both  in  Hebrew  and  Mohammedan  forms  to 
become  a  mere  juggling  with  letters  or  magic. 

Religion  as  Law  has  been  the  prevailing  Jewish  concep- 

1  This  Moses  Maimonides  was  called  the  "  second  Moses."  A 
"third  Moses"  was  Mendelssohn,  who  in  the  eighteenth  century 
was  instrumental  in  emancipating  the  Jews. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  449 

tion  of  religion  since  the  day  of  Bar  Cocheba  in  the  second 
century  A.  D.  Yet  the  Law  is  but  the  formal  expression  of 
what  was  conceived  as  answering  to  divine  requirements. 
The  basis  of  the  law  has  always  been  the  belief  in  the  na- 
tional God  and  the  practice  of  devotion,  sobriety,  charity, 
and  domestic  purity.  Mysticism  has  rarely  degenerated 
into  sensuality  and  such  emotional  licentiousness  as  arose 
among  the  Chassidists  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  op- 
posed by  the  Talmudists.  Mediaeval  Judaism  had  its  poets 
and  philosophers,  such  as  the  poet  Ibn  Ezra  of  the  eleventh 
and  twelfth  century  and  the  philosophers  Saadia  of  Sura 
and  Gabirol  of  Spain ;  but  the  latter  cannot  be  said  to  have 
originated  new  philosophies.  Gabirol  was  the  most  original 
mediaeval  Jewish  philosopher,  but  his  Fons  Vitae  is  based 
on  Neo-Platonic  ideas.1  Till  the  tenth  century  Babylonia 
remained  the  seat  of  Jewish  culture.  In  Europe,  Moham- 
medan thought,  as  well  as  Greek,  formed  the  basis  of  Jew- 
ish philosophy.  These  philosophers,  however,  are  impor- 
tant as  their  works  affected  Christian  philosophy.  Thus 
Thomas  Aquinas  is  affected  by  Maimonides,  who  reverts  to 
Ibn  Baud,  who  in  turn  is  chiefly  concerned  with  harmon- 
izing Aristotle  and  Moses.  Later  mediaeval  Judaism  re- 
nounced philosophy  and  reverted  to  Kabbalah  mysticism.2 

Judaism  has  never  been  dogmatic;  its  chief  dogma  is  to 
have  no  dogma ;  no  creed-test  excommunicates.  Hillel  said : 
"  Do  not  to  another  what  thou  thyself  hatest ;  this  is  the 
chief  law."  Dogma  as  a  test  of  membership  in  the  church 
was  attempted  by  the  Karaites  and  by  Maimonides,  but  the 

1  He  was  a  mystic  and  regarded  God's  will  as  mediating  between 
God  and  the  world  as  a  sort  of  Logos ;  hence  he  was  evei*  called 
a  "  Christian  Jew." 

2  Kabbalah,  "  tradition,"  is  in  general  a  theosophic  mysticism,  in 
part  Neo-Platonic,  perhaps  referred  to  as  early  as  Ben  Sira  in  the 
second   century   B.  c.,    and   known    to    Gnostic    writers.     It   became 
popular  in  Europe  after  the  tenth  century.     It  teaches  metempsy- 
chosis and  makes  God,  as  "  dwelling-place  of  the  universe,"  create 
by  wisdom  and  become  manifest  through  wisdom,  insight,  power, 
etc.     See,  for  example,  B.  Pick,  The  Cabala,  Chkago,  1913,  and  the 
Jewish  Encyclopedia  s.  v. 


450  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

test  was  never  confirmed  by  authority.  Generally,  however, 
as  proof  of  orthodoxy,  is  accepted  belief  in  God,  revela- 
tion, and  Judgment.  Modern  attempts  to  formulate  dogma 
add  belief  in  God's  immanence,  in  man's  immortality  and 
responsibility.  Atonement  is  made  by  fasting,  prayer 
(praise  and  petition),  charity,  and  purification.  Modern 
Jews  celebrate  the  first  day  of  the  seventh  month  (New 
Year's  Day)  as  the  beginning  of  a  penitential  period  end- 
ing with  the  Day  of  Atonement.  The  Purim  has  become  a 
day  of  charity  or  a  childish  celebration,  innocently  re- 
placing the  original  parallel  of  a  Saturnalia.1  Another  cele- 
bration originally  of  the  Maccabees  and  called  a  feast  of 
lights,  Hannukkah  or  Chanuka,  is  now  interpreted  as  a  feast 
of  enlightenment. 

Zionism  is  a  form  of  Messianic  hope  with  the  Messiah 
left  out;  it  is  a  late  effort  to  return  to  Palestine  and  appeals 
to  the  conservatives.  Liberal  Jews  interpret  Judaism  as  a 
means  of  enlightening  the  world.  They  follow  the  hint 
of  the  later  prophets  that  the  people  of  Israel  is  the  Mes- 
sianic Son  of  God.  They  have  modernized  the  religious 
service  and  rejected  as  unessential  many  ceremonial  laws. 

In  reviewing  Jewish  religion  one  cannot  fail  to  be  struck 
with  the  contrast  between  it  and  other  Semitic  as  well  as 
non-Semitic  religions.  Judaism  refined  not  only  old  laws 
and  legends  of  the  Semites  but  it  refined  itself.  Patriarchal 
improprieties,  for  example,  were  retold  ethically  by  the 
priests,  who  preferred  expurgated  and  hence  instructive 
narrative  to  shameless  accuracy.  Monotheism  was  not 
enough;  it  must  be  united  with  morality.  Thus  a  domi- 
nantly  ethical  strain  appears  throughout  the  religion,  both 
in  its  legal  and  prophetic  expression.  On  the  whole  the 
religion  is  civic  rather  than  individualistic.  It  is  clannish 
and  in  this  regard  resembles  that  of  the  early  Greeks.  Kin- 

1  At  the  Purim  the  usually  abstemious  Jews  might  intoxicate 
themselves  and  play  at  masquerades.  It  celebrated  the  destruction 
of  Haman  and  the  deliverance  of  the  Jews  through  Esther  (Ishtar?) 
and  Mordecai  (Marduk?),  that  is,  a  late  travesty  of  the  Babylonian 
myth,  according  to  Noldeke.  See  above,  p.  362. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL  45 l 

ship  with  the  deity  and  clan-morality  characterize  both.1 
Judaism  is  a  bridge  leading  directly  to  Christianity. 
If  the  last  aspiration  of  the  Jew  was  "  Thy  kingdom  come  " 
in  Palestine,  it  was  also  able  to  embrace  all  nations  in  its 
purview.  Moreover  its  God  was  not  only  a  judge  but  a 
God  of  loving-kindness,  not  only  a  king  but  a  Father  in 
Heaven:  "Call  me  Father;  I  am  merciful"  (Jer.  iii.  19; 
ix.  24;  xxxi.  9).  Hence  this  religion  also  is  one  of  love 
as  well  as  of  fear  ("  Love  the  Lord —  fear  the  Lord,"  Ps. 
xxxi.  23;  xxxiv.  9;  cf.  xci.  14).  Finally,  Judaism  is  not 
one-sided;  it  is  a  religion  of  fear  but  also  of  joy,  not  only 
of  joy  in  the  Lord  but  of  cheerfulness.  "Do  not  worry; 
joy  in  the  heart  is  life  to  a  man,"  says  Ecclesiasticus.  Puri- 
tanic in  the  meticulous  observance  of  religious  rules,  the 
Pharisaic  side  was  offset  by  Sadducean  hatred  of  gloom. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

S.  A.  Cook,  Religion  of  Ancient  Palestine,  Chicago,  1908. 
Karl  Marti,  The  Religion  of  the  Old  Testament,  New  York, 

1907. 

Alfred  Loisy,  The  Religion  of  Israel,  New  York,  1910. 
J.  P.  Peters,  The  Religion  of  the  Hebrews,  New  York,  1914. 
A.  Kuenen,  The  Religion  of  Israel,  London,  1874. 
R.  H.  Charles,  The  Apocrypha  and  Pseudepigrapha  of  the  Old 

Testament,  Cambridge,  1913. 
W.  Bousset,  Die  Religion  des  Judenthums  im  neutestamentlichen 

Zeitalter,  2nd  ed.,  Berlin,  1906. 
Isaac  Husik,  A  History  of  Mediaeval  Jewish  Philosophy,  New 

York,  1916. 

1  In  Greece  marriage  was  a  religious  sacrament  and  the  laws 
concerning  homicide  have  a  religious  basis.  In  Greece  also  divine 
vengeance  and  mercy  are  united,  and  the  divine  nature  is  held  up 
as  a  model  for  man. 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-ONE 

THE   RELIGION    OF    MOHAMMED   AND   MOHAMMEDANISM 

As  in  the  case  of  all  "  founders'  religions,"  we  have  to  dis- 
tinguish in  Mohammedanism  between  the  personal  faith 
of  the  founder  and  the  beliefs  of  the  later  body  of  the 
faithful.  Mohammed  was  the  logical  and  historical  suc- 
cessor of  the  old  prophets  of  Israel.  He  believed  that  he 
was  carrying  on  their  work;  that  God  had  appointed  him 
as  an  apostle  to  the  Arabs,  as  the  Hebrew  prophets  had 
been  chosen  to  reveal  God  to  their  people.  And  in  truth, 
since  Mohammed's  God  was  the  God  of  the  Hebrews,  it  is 
difficult  to  see  why  one  should  hesitate  to  recognize  in  Allah 
the  same  Deity  as  in  Yahweh,  attend  a  mosque  as  a  church 
of  God,  or  accept  Mohammed  as  the  prophet  through  whom 
at  least  his  people  were  led  to  God. 

The  Koran  of  Mohammed,  "  the  Praised,"  is,  in  the  be- 
lief of  himself  and  his  followers,  the  word  of  God  trans- 
mitted to  the  Prophet  by  Gabriel.  It  was  revealed  at  a 
time  when  the  Arabs  needed  correction  and  when  the  Jews 
and  Christians  of  Arabia  were  imbued  with  the  same  super- 
stitions as  were  the  Arabs.  Previous  to  the  birth  of  Mo- 
hammed, 750  A.  D.,  the  religion  of  the  Arabs  had  been  a 
mixture  of  primitive  nature-worship  and  corrupt  Babylo- 
nian star-cult.  The  chief  objects  of  devotion  were  Jinns 
(spirits  of  the  mountains  and  desert),  and  tribal  deities. 
Some  tribes  worshipped  the  female  deity,  Allat ;  the  acacia 
tree  was  a  form  of  the  love-goddess ;  Zaf a  and  Marwa  were 
mountains  holy  in  themselves  and  having  holy  images;  holy 
also  was  the  Black  Stone  in  the  wall  of  the  Kaabah,  which 
afterwards  became  the  chief  shrine  of  Mohammedanism. 
But  Allah,  "  the  god,"  was  already  recognized  by  more 
than  one  of  the  tribes  as  "  God  most  high,"  but  beside  him 

452 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  453 

were  set  gods  in  human  and  animal  form,  and  the  worship 
of  sacred  stones  and  trees  was  general.  Mohammed  re- 
tained in  his  own  religion  the  belief  in  Jinns,  in  predestina- 
tion and  fatalism.  Mecca,  "  the  synagogue,"  built  about 
450  A.  D.  around  the  Kaabah,  and  long  before  held  sacred,  re- 
mained to  the  Prophet  also  a  holy  city. 

The  race  from  which  Mohammed  sprang  was  character- 
ized by  strength,  both  in  vice  and  virtue.  It  was  brave, 
hospitable,  clannish,  haughty,  poetical;  it  was  given  to  rob- 
bery, murder,  and  lust;  it  was  cruel  and  superstitious;  its 
governing  power  lay  in  the  hands  of  the  boldest;  wealth 
and  bravery  made  a  man  chief  both  in  politics  and  in  reli- 
gion. In  Mohammed's  own  case,  according  to  tradition, 
the  religious  chieftainship  of  Mecca,  which  had  been  in  his 
family,  had  been  lost  through  poverty.  At  the  age  of 
twenty-five  he  married  a  rich  widow  fifteen  years  his  senior. 
Visions  inspired  him  to  believe  himself  (at  the  age  of  forty) 
a  prophet,  sent  to  Arabs  as  of  old  Abraham  or  Jesus  had  been 
sent  —  to  each  folk  its  own  prophet.  Mohammed's  first 
converts  were  a  few  of  his  own  family  and  familiars,  women, 
slaves,  his  cousin  Ali,  a  merchant,  Abu  Bakr,  and  a  soldier, 
Omar.  Opposition  to  him  was  based  mainly  on  the  feeling 
that  he  was  an  infatuated  or  deceitful  "  sorcerer,"  to  which 
his  way  of  life  and  oracular  utterances  lent  probability,1 
but  also  on  hatred  of  his  teaching,  not  indeed  of  mono- 
theism but  of  the  practical  results  of  opposing  polytheism. 
Mecca  was  a  town  of  plutocrats  ruling  an  equally  material- 
istic populace.  No  one  cared  whether  Mohammed  taught 
monotheism ;  abstract  theology  has  never  annoyed  Orientals. 
But  the  city  got  wealth  from  its  cult  of  gods  and  even 
Mohammed  was  at  first  inclined  to  temporize  and  admit  the 
possible  power  of  the  local  divinities.  He  soon  recanted 
this  "  suggestion  (whisper)  of  Satan,"  however,  and  his 

1  Religious  ardour  leading  to  ecstasy  was  inspired  by  preliminary 
seclusion,  in  which  the  sorcerer,  wrapped  in  a  blanket,  induced  the 
feverish  excitement  which  preceded  the  oracular  outburst.  It  is 
probable  that  Mohammed  practiced  this  mode  of  inducing  spiritual 
possession. 


454  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

renewed  activity  led  to  persecution  on  the  part  of  the  Kore- 
ish  family  of  Mecca  to  which  his  own  family  belonged. 
Some  of  his  earliest  inspirations  were  little  more  than  im- 
precations against  his  family  and  townsmen.  He  and  his 
then  took  refuge  with  Abyssinian  Christians,  whose  refusal 
to  give  up  the  refugees  favourably  inclined  him  at  first  to 
Christians  till  he  found  that  he  could  not  convert  them. 
His  attitude  toward  Jews  and  Christians  in  later  life  was 
consistently  one  of  disparagement  and  antagonism,  because 
they  did  not  believe  in  monotheism,  but  (as  he  thought) 
Christians  made  of  Jesus  and  Mary  two  gods  besides  God, 
and  the  Jews  "  made  Ezra  the  son  of  God."  Yet  as  most 
of  the  Jewish  tradition  was  in  line  with  Mohammed's  teach- 
ing, he  accepted  it  in  the  distorted  form  known  to  him 
(Ishmael,  for  example,  assumes  Isaac's  place),  but  he 
rejected  God's  "  resting'"  on  the  seventh  day,  and  any  im- 
plication of  association  with  God  of  other  powers  as  co- 
gods,  sons,  or  daughters  (angels).1 

Mohammed,  like  Zoroaster,  accomplished  little  for  ten 
years  and  finally  prevailed  not  by  argument  but  by  force. 
Deserting  Mecca  and  his  own  people,  who  generally  re- 
jected him,  he  had  recourse  to  half  Jewish  tribes  who,  ex- 
pecting a  Messiah  and  disliking  Mecca,  accepted  the  Prophet. 
Mohammed  with  Abu  Bakr  fled  to  Yathreb,  "two  against 
many,"  as  the  latter  despairingly  said ;  but  "  three  "  said 
Mohammed,  "  for  God  is  with  us."  This  Flight,  Hijra  or 

1  God's  day  is  a  thousand  or  fifty  thousand  years  (xxxii.  4;  Ixx. 
4).  [Present  references  are  to  Suras  of  the  Koran.]  God  "sent 
apostles  and  followed  them  up  with  Jesus  and  gave  him  the  gospel 
and  placed  kindness  and  compassion  in  the  heart  of  his  followers  " 
(Ivii.  25  f.)  ;  but  Jesus  "never  said  that  he  and  his  mother  were 
two  gods"  (v.  113).  "If  God  has  a  son  I  will  be  first  to  worship 
him;  but  join  none  with  God"  and  "say  not  Three.  God  is  only 
one"  (iv.  169;  Ixxii.  20).  Later,  Mohammed  says  of  both  Jew  and 
Christian  as  preachers  of  "  Shirk "  (association  of  others  with 
God),  "God  fight  them,  how  they  lie!"  (ix.  30).  For  pardcletos, 
John  xvi.  7,  Mohammed  believed  that  Jesus  said  (periklutos  or  its 
equivalent)  Ahmed,  which  in  turn  means  Mohammed  (praised, 
celebrated)  :  "Jesus  said,  I  give  you  glad  tidings  of  an  apostle  who 
shall  come  after  me.  whose  name  shall  be  Ahmed"  (Ixi.  6). 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  455 

Hegira,  fixes  the  date  of  the  Mohammedan  era  as  June  16, 
622.  The  week-day  on  which  Mohammed  entered  Yathreb 
became  the  Mohammedan  holy  day,  Friday ;  the  town  itself, 
largely  Jewish,  becoming  known  thereafter  as  the  Prophet's 
Town,  Medina.  There  he  built  a  mosque,  regulated  the 
simple  rites  of  his  religion,  and  appointed  the  first  crier 
of  prayer,  muezzin.  The  Jews,  however,  soon  parted  from 
Mohammed  and  as  already  explained  he  regarded  them 
thenceforth  as  enemies,  turning  now  to  Mecca  not  to  Jeru- 
salem in  prayer,  and  instituting  the  fast  of  Ramadhan  to 
take  the  place  of  Jewish  fasts.  He  began  to  preach  a  "  holy 
war,"  put  a  Jewess  to  death,  exiled  a  Jewish  tribe  (they 
perhaps  deserved  their  fate),  robbed  a  Mecca  caravan,  sub- 
dued several  Bedouin  tribes,  and  by  constant  fighting  caused 
himself  to  be  recognized  as  an  independent  prince,  till  in 
630  he  was  able  to  return  to  Mecca  as  its  master;  whence 
he  instituted  raids  and  united  his  followers  in  the  hope  of 
booty  in  this  life  and  beatitude  in  the  next.  He  died  June  8, 
632. 

Mohammed  was  the  first  and  greatest  of  sundry  Arabian 
prophets.  He  succeeded  in  his  efforts  to  establish  a  new 
religion  partly  because  of  his  genuine  enthusiasm  and  strong 
personality,  and  partly  because  of  his  political  sagacity. 
His  aims  were  directly  opposed  to  the  material  interests  of 
his  people,  and  his  religion  from  the  beginning  broke  up  the 
tribal  unity  which  was  the  key-note  of  the  Arabian  state. 
As  the  Dionysiac  and  Orphic  cults  in  Greece  undermined 
the  religious  and  political  conditions,  so  Mohammedanism 
substituted  a  religious  unity  for  a  political  group.  From 
the  economic  side  it  substituted  prosperity  through  conquest 
and  rapine  for  the  commercial  prosperity  which  had  made 
Mecca  a  well-known  mart.  Mohammed,  however,  preached 
nothing  new  to  his  countrymen,  who  had  long  been  ac- 
quainted with  the  doctrine  of  the  Judgment  Day  and  the 
idea  of  divine  unity.  Yet  to  reassert  an  old  truth  is  to 
originate  again.  Mohammed's  originality  lay  in  his  insist- 
ence on  the  truth  of  a  judgment  to  come  and  its  implication 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

of  the  necessity  of  an  ethical  improvement  on  the  part  of 
those  who  were  to  meet  it  and  to  be  judged  by  a  Creator 
who  held  men  responsible  for  their  belief  in  a  moral  God 
and  for  conduct  consonant  with  that  belief.  He  did  not 
deny  that  there  were  spirits  (worshipped  by  the  Arabs), 
but  he  forbade  their  association  with  God.  He  did  not  do 
away  with  the  fetish-stone,  but  sanctified  it ;  he  did  not  stop 
the  pilgrimage,  but  made  it  an  adjunct  to  the  worship  of 
the  One  God.  Ethically  he  taught  justice  and  truth,  repre- 
hended pride  and  envy,  and  exalted  filial  devotion  and 
charity.1  Orphans,  mothers,  and  wives  were  subjects  of 
his  special  consideration ;  he  denounced  the  current  practice 
of  female  infanticide,  improved  divorce  laws,  restricted 
polygamy  to  the  possession  of  four  wives,  and  then  only 
if  the  husband  could  treat  them  equitably,  and  forbade 
trading  in  slaves.  He  also  tried  to  abolish  the  blood-feud 
and  opposed  the  use  of  intoxicants  and  gambling.  A  pure 
heart  and  good  works  as  concomitants  of  faith  in  One  God 
and  the  Judgment  Day  became  the  ethical  ideal. 

Not  less  firmly  did  Mohammed  believe  that  he  was  God's 
apostle  and  that  his  oracular  utterances  as  at  first  revealed 
to  him  were  words  of  God,  a  graded  and  continuous  illumi- 
nation of  divine  truths.  These  utterances,  revealed  piece- 
meal during  twenty-three  years  as  the  Koran  (reading  or 
recitation)  are  in  rhymed  prose  containing  114  chapters  or 
Suras,  in  which  the  "  inspiration,"  judged  by  style  and 
matter,  varies  considerably.  But  to  the  believer  all  is 
equally  inspired:  "God  taught  the  pen"  (xcvi.  5).  Ga- 
briel appeared  twice  to  him,  once  on  the  occasion  when  he 
made  a  miraculous  night-journey  from  Mecca  to  Jerusa- 
lem and  once  on  the  first  revelation  of  the  Koran  (liii.  5). 
His  opponents  said  that  he  was  "  possessed  by  a  Jinn  " ; 
but  he  indignantly  denies  this,  as  he  charges,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  these  opponents  worship  angels  and  Jinns  in- 

1The  gentleness  of  Mohammed's  teaching  is  not  perhaps  without 
a  physical  basis.  He  is  described  as  a  man  inclined  to  melancholy 
and  unable  to  endure  the  slightest  pain. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  457 

stead  of  God  (xxxiv.  40-45).  Of  Mohammed's  early  hon- 
esty there  can  be  no  doubt.  He  pretends  to  nothing  save 
his  inspiration.  "  I  am  but  a  mortal  like  yourselves ;  I  am 
inspired  that  your  God  is  only  One  God"  (xviii.  no). 
His  opponents  cry  for  a  sign  and  say  that  unless  he  brings 
it  his  revelation  is  but  a  jumble  of  dreams  or  a  forgery ; 
but  Mohammed  says  that  he  has  no  sign  other  than  the 
truth :  "  We  hurl  the  truth  against  falsehood  and  truth 
crashes  into  it  and  falsehood  vanishes"  (xxxi.  5f.).  And 
God  says,  "  I  will  show  you  My  signs,  but  do  not  hurry 
Me"  (xxi.  38).  Mohammed  compares  himself  to  the 
prophets  of  old  and  his  environment  with  theirs.  Thus  he 
says  that  Noah  and  the  rest  proclaimed  "  No  God  but  God  " 
and  the  great  men  of  that  day  said,  "  This  fellow  is  only  a 
mortal  like  yourselves,  who  wishes  to  have  dominion  over 
you;  if  God  had  pleased  he  would  have  sent  angels  (not 
Noah,  to  warn  you)  ;  he  is  only  a  man  possessed,"  exactly 
the  language  used  of  Mohammed  (xxiii.  25).  So  of  old, 
says  Mohammed,  they  called  The  Day  (of  resurrection)  a 
lie,  saying :  "  There  is  only  our  life  in  this  world ;  we  live 
and  die  and  shall  not  be  raised"  (ib.  39).  Again  and 
again  Mohammed  simply  and  earnestly  insists  that  the 
Koran  is  "  a  revelation  brought  down  by  Gabriel  (the 
Faithful  Spirit)  in  plain  Arabic  "  and  foretold  in  the  scrip- 
tures of  which  it  is  a  continuation  (xxvi.  I93f.).  But  the 
Arabs  said  that  the  Pentateuch  and  the  Koran  were  both 
works  of  sorcery  which  backed  up  each  other  and  declared 
"  We  disbelieve  in  all "  (xxviii.  48)  ;  to  which  the  Prophet 
replied :  "  Then  bring  a  better  revelation  and  I  will  follow 
it."  Elsewhere  he  cries :  "  God  has  sent  down  the  best  of 
legends  ...  it  is  a  grand  story,  yet  ye  turn  from  it " 
(xxxviii.  59;  xxxix.  24). 

Mohammedanism,  however,  would  never  have  become  im- 
portant had  it  not  been  for  military  success.  Many  repudi- 
ated the  faith  as  soon  as  Mohammed  died  and,  as  before  his 
death  so  now,  orthodoxy  was  upheld  only  with  the  sword. 
Islam  means  resignation,  but  only  with  God's  will;  it  does 


458  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

not  imply  patience  with  infidels  who  oppose  the  faith.  Ag- 
gressive unbelievers  must  be  made  resigned ;  submissive  un- 
believers were  at  first  unmolested,  afterwards  they  too  were 
reduced,  not  to  belief  but  to  submission.  To  reduce  op- 
ponents to  tax-payers  rather  than  to  converts  was  the  aim 
of  the  body  politic,  which  became  the  church  militant  imme- 
diately after  the  Prophet's  death. 

The  soldier  of  the  church  as  the  soldier  of  God  was  not 
permitted  to  commit  suicide  or  to  become  an  ascetic,  as 
that  would  be  to  desert  his  post.  He  must  be  resigned  to 
fate  as  apportioned  by  God.  But  this  fatalism  of  Islam 
was  not  yielding  to  fate  as  chance,  only  to  the  predetermin- 
ing will  of  God. 

Thus  Mohammedanism  differed  from  the  exclusiveness 
of  the  Jewish  religion;  it  received  all  into  its  fold.  But  it 
differed  also  from  the  Christian  in  substituting  submission 
for  mission.  At  a  later  stage  it  drew  from  Christianity 
the  practice  of  celibacy  and  asceticism,  foreign  to  its  earlier 
spirit,  and  also  taught  that  a  soldier  might  be  a  soldier 
allegorically,  a  merchant  for  example,  fighting  against  evil 
impulses.  But  the  early  church  was  essentially  militant  in 
a  literal  sense.  At  first  toleration  was  the  rule.  "  There 
is  no  compulsion  in  religion  "  is  said  to  have  been  said  by 
Mohammed  and  he  gave  freedom  of  service  to  the  Chris- 
tians of  Najran  (in  Yemen)  :  "  No  image  or  cross  shall 
be  destroyed;  they  shall  not  be  oppressed."  But  success 
brought  intolerance.  The  Prophet  of  Mecca  became  the 
Prince  of  Medina,  no  longer  a  "  plain  warner  "  but  God's 
Apostle,  in  whom  as  in  God  the  faithful  must  believe  and 
to  whom  heretics  must  pay  the  price  of  conquest.  Power 
acquired  through  faith  "  in  God  and  His  Apostle  "  of  course 
impressed  him  as  added  proof  of  his  divine  mission.  His 
religious  feeling  was  still  genuine  but  his  religion  more  and 
more  included  himself  and  he  appears  in  later  life  to  have 
utilized  his  revelations  to  the  good  of  the  Prophet  as  well 
as  to  the  glory  of  God.  In  general,  however,  Mohammed 
is  sincere. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  459 

Thus  he  confesses,  by  implication,  that  he  was  wrong 
owing  to  a  suggestion  of  Satan  (xxii.  50  f.),  in  propitiating 
the  Koreish  by  admitting  the  sanctity  of  their  gods;  and  on 
one  occasion  when  he  had  snubbed  a  poor  man,  who  had 
interrupted  him  to  get  instruction,  he  admitted  his  fault 
and  records  in  the  Koran  the  rebuke  he  deservedly  re- 
ceived (Ixxx.).  Only  an  honest  and  good  man  would  have 
done  this.  Mohammed  professed  himself  to  be  a  late  but 
true  prophet  of  God,  as  much  inspired  as  was  Abraham 
(whose  religion  was  also  his)  to  teach  pure  religioM  and 
undefiled  to  those  who  worshipped  idols  and  ignored  or 
denied  a  life  to  come.  But  his  revelation  is  better  than 
Abraham's,  who  condoned  idolatry  (ix.  115).  Nor,  in 
Mohammed's  teaching,  does  God  require  the  Jewish  sacri- 
fice :  "  I  have  created  man  and  Jinn  only  to  worship  Me ; 
I  do  not  desire  provision  from  them,  nor  do  I  wish  them 
to  feed  Me.  Verily  God  is  the  provider"  (li.  56).  A  lib- 
eral simplicity  marks  Mohammed's  creed :  "  Those  who 
say  our  Lord  is  God  and  then  keep  straight,  there  is  no  fear 
for  them"  (xlvi.  iof.).  As  in  Zoroastrianism,  the  believer 
is  a  helper  of  God.  "  God  will  help  him  who  helps  Him  " 
(xxii.  41)  ;"  So  be  ye  helpers  of  God,  even  as  Jesus'  apos- 
tles said:  'We  are  God's  helpers'1'  (Ixi.  14;  cf.  iii.  45). 
These  phrases  imply  that  the  believer  "  helps  "  by  battling 
with  the  misbeliever,  as  is  clearly  said  in  the  late  Mecca  or 
Medina  Sura  (xlvi.):  "When  ye  meet  those  who  mis- 
believe, strike  off  their  heads  or  hold  them  (for  ransom)  ; 
those  slain  in  God's  cause  shall  not  go  wrong;  if  ye  help 
God  He  will  help  you."  In  the  earlier  period  the  note  is 
not  so  militant  as  ethical  and  religious :  "  Blessed  are  they, 
for  they  shall  inherit  Paradise,  who  believe,  who  are  hum- 
ble, who  do  not  talk  vainly,  who  are  charitable,  who  are 
blameless  as  respects  women,  and  who  observe  their  pledges 
and  covenants  and  guard  their  prayers"  (xxiii.  if.).1 
"  Believe  in  Him  and  He  will  pardon  and  save  "  (xlvi.  30). 

1  Blameless  means  chaste  except  for  lawful  intercourse  with 
wives  and  slaves  (owned  by  the  believer). 


460  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Rare  is  the  higher  injunction  to  do  good  for  evil:  "  Re- 
pel evil  with  what  is  better"  (xxiii.  97).  An  approach  to 
Indie  phrase  and  thought  may  be  observed  in  the  likeness 
of  life  to  a  mere  pastime  as  compared  with  the  real  life 
hereafter :  "  The  life  of  this  world  is  but  sport  and  play ; 
the  abode  of  the  next  world  is  (real)  life"  (xxix.  64). 
Indie  too  is  the  repeated  phrase,  "  No  burdened  soul  shall 
bear  another's  burden;  who  errs,  errs  only  against  his  own 
soul  "  (xvii.  16;  liii.  39).  Compare  too  (lii.  22)  :  "  Every 
man  is  pledged  for  what  he  earns,"  that  is,  every  one  is 
pledged  for  his  conduct  and  redeems  himself  if  he  does 
well.  This  individualistic  view,  however,  is  modified  by 
the  doctrine  of  divine  mercy  and  grace.  "  God  gives  His 
grace  to  whomsoever  He  will;  God  is  Lord  of  mighty 
grace"  (Ixii.  4).  This  mercy  may  be  extended  at  the  in- 
tercession of  the  Prophet  (see  below).  In  general,  how- 
ever, Mohammed  taught  a  religion  of  fear,  not  of  love,  and, 
until  modified  by  the  Sufi  element  introduced  later,  it  was  a 
religion  lacking  in  two  regards,  that  of  the  conception  of 
the  Fatherhood  of  God,  the  milder  aspect,  and  that  of  the 
immanence  of  God,  the  universal  aspect.  There  are 
phrases  which  countenance  both  aspects  and  they  have  been 
taken  by  later  Mohammedans  to  authorize  both.  Thus  the 
mercy  of  God  (as  above)  is  dwelt  upon  by  Mohammed,  who 
also  speaks  of  God  as  within  man  and  nearer  than  his 
jugular  vein;  but  these  are  not  the  views  usually  presented, 
and  though  the  Koran  is  full  of  contradictions  the  trend  of 
teaching  and  the  teaching  accepted  by  early  Mohammedans 
show  that  Allah  is  rather  the  older  Jewish  Yahweh,  a 
transcendent  God,  fearful  rather  than  kind. 

The  fundamental  teachings  of  Mohammed  as  expressed 
in  his  own  words  bear  the  same  relation  to  the  theology  of 
Moslem  scholars  as  Christ's  words  bear  to  Christian  theol- 
ogy. Mohammed  himself  was  no  scholar;  nor  was  he  in 
any  way  a  metaphysician.  He  has  no  speculation  and  very 
little  logic  in  the  Koran ;  what  little  there  is  seems  to  be 
remarkably  na'ive.  "  How  can  one  believe  in  more  than  one 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  461 

God?  If  there  were  more  than  one,  each  would  take  his 
own  creation  and  some  would  have  exalted  themselves  over 
others"  (xxiii.  93).  "How  can  one  fail  to  believe  in  the 
raising  of  the  dead  ?  Did  not  God  create  you  once  ?  How 
then  should  he  not  create  you  a  second  time?  Twice-born 
and  twice-slain  is  every  one"  (xl.).  "We  (Allah)  have 
made  waters  from  the  cloud  for  you  to  drink,  when  We 
might  have  made  it  unfit  to  drink  (pungent),  and  We  have 
made  the  tree  from  which  ye  make  fire;  can  ye  make  the 
tree?  Why  then  do  ye  not  praise  Me?"  (Ivi.  67-70). 
"  God  sends  lightning  for  fear  and  hope  (of  rain)  ;  He  sends 
his  thunder  —  which  celebrates  His  praise  —  and  therewith 
smites  whom  He  will ;  and  yet  they  dispute  about  God !  " 
(xiii.  lof.).1  "Do  they  (who  are  misbelievers)  not  re- 
gard whatever  thing  God  has  created?  Its  shadow  falls 
to  right  or  left,  shrinking  up  in  adoration  of  God  .  .  .  then 
will  ye  not  fear  Him?"  (ibid,  and  xvi.  5of.).  This  is 
obviously  the  language  not  of  a  metaphysician  but  of  a 
prophet ;  so  also  is  that  in  which  appeal  is  made  to  the  past. 
"  Will  ye  not  fear  God  ?  Remember  that  He  once  changed 
men  to  apes  because  they  fished  on  the  Sabbath  "  (ii.  6of.).2 
Of  subordinate  importance  are  those  teachings  which  im- 
plicitly or  explicitly  express  belief  in  a  mass  of  legends 

1  Practically  the  same  argument  as  is  found  in  the  Rig  Veda,  in 
American,  and  even  in  African  religions:     God  is  demonstrated  by 
his  activity;  effect  proves  cause.     It  is  quite  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  the  first  idea  of  a  Heavenly  Spirit   (in  distinction  from  vague 
potencies,  disease-devils,  etc.)    arose  from  this  source,  recognition 
of  an  active  power  above  as  Jupiter  Feretrius,  the  smiter,  etc.    Due 
to   later  contemplation   is   the   logic    which   argues   God,   from   the 
orderly  processes  of  the  heavens,  as  Right  (Order). 

2  Tradition   says  that  this  happened  in   David's  time;  hence  the 
respect  for  the  Sabbath.     Another  (ibid.)  example  is  given  by  the 
legend  that  a  mountain  was  held  over  the  people  to  frighten  them. 
Possibly  a  cloud  is  meant  (compare  cloud  as  mountain  in  the  Veda), 
as  it  is  said   elsewhere  that  God   sends   down  mountains,  that  is, 
clouds,   from  the   sky  to  give   rain    (xxiv.  42).     Here,   too,   is   the 
suggestion  that  men  should  praise  God  since  even  the  birds  praise 
Him.     In  xxix.  64,  it  is  said  bitterly  that  men  in  ships  call  upon 
God  to  save  them,  but,  when  He  has  saved,  "they  worship  others 
with  Him." 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

gathered  from  Jewish  and  Arabic  tradition.  Mohammed 
accepted  such  of  these  as  suited  him  and  used  them  for 
illustrative  instruction.  I O  us  thry  are  either  parts  of 

|e\\ish  literature  or  amplifications  thereof  more  curious 
tli. in  \.duable.  As  in  tlu%  ease  of  lluv  substitution  of  Islmuel 
I'or  Isaac,  thc\  sbo\\  (hat  Mohammed  lehcil  on  a  loose  pop 
ular  version  oi'  irailition  liable  to  histoiieal  error.  A  few 
examples  \\ill  snllicc  to  indicate  the  use  made  ol  thesr  K  :; 
ends,  \\ith  \\hicli  are  mingled  hits  ol  history  Irom  recent 
limes,  sncb  as  the  ilestrnclion  ol  the  1'Yllows  ol  the  Me 
pliant  at  the  haiuls  ol"  the  Lord,  who  overthrew  tbem  with 
stones  hurled  by  birds  lev.).  Thus  instruction  is  derived 
from  the  tale  of  the  seven  sleepers,  who  passed  three  hun- 
dred and  nine  \ears  m  a  cave  with  their  do;;;  Irom  that  of 
Kl  'llidhr  ami  the  water  of  life;  from  that  of  the  two- 
horncd  Alexander;  and  from  that  of  ( loi^  and  Ma:;*';; 
(xviii,).  Moses  burned  his  tongue j  Aaron  \\as  Ins  vi/ir 
(xx.) ;  the  queen  of  Sheba  worshipped  the  sun;  the  hoopoe 
.was  absent  nmoni;  the  biuls  assembled  for  Solomon  and 

\vas  threatened  \\ith  his  answer  (xxvii.  jot".).  \\'!HMI  Peter 
convertcxl  Antioch  the  shout  of  ( iahriel  destroyed  a  host 
(xxxvi.  28).  Gabriel  bade  Job  strike  the  earth  with  his 
foot  and  there  sprang  up  a  healing  fountain!  bathing  wherein 
Job  was  cured  and  his  wife  became  • 
(xxxviii,,  also  legend  of  Solomon's  ring,  ibid.).  Noah  said 
to  his  people,  "  Ye  shall  surely  not  leave  your  gods,  neither 
Wadd,  nor  Suwajh  nor  Yajhuth  nor  Ya'uq,  nor  Nasr,  who 
have  led  many  astray  " l  (Ixxi.  2of.)« 

On  the  other  hand,  one  cannot  dismiss  as  unimportant 
those  teachings  which,  instead  of  looking  back  upon  earth 
(pseudo-historical),  look  up  to  the  world  unseen  and  on 
to  the  fate  of  man.  for  they  i;ive  the  intellectual  environ- 
ment in  which  alone  could  spring  up  to  fruit  fulness  the 
teachings  of  Mohammed  based  on  belief  in  the  resurrection, 

1  These  were  Arabian  gods  of  Mohammed's  day  in  the  form  of 
idols,  representing  the  sky-god  as  a  man,  a  woman  (earth-god- 
dess?), a  lion,  a  horse,  and  an  eagle,  respectively. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  4r>3 

in  a  judgment  to  come,  and  in  One  God.  Had  these  been 
left  vague  outlines,  they  would  not  have  had  effect.  It 
was  necessary  to  describe  God  and  His  works,  to  paint  viv- 
idly the  day  to  be  expected,  to  relate  in  detail  the  sorrows 
and  joys  hereafter.  We  may  reduce  the  frequent  repetitions 
on  these  themes  to  one  collective  statement. 

God  is  One  without  a  second.  His  face  is  the  East  and 
the  West.  "  Adore  not  sun  and  moon  but  God  "  (xli.  37). 
He  created  the  seven  heavens  and  the  earth  and  all  between 
and  the  seven  hells  (hell  with  seven  doors)  and  Adam  from 
clay  and  I  hi  is  (Satan)  from  smokeless  flame.  And  because 
Iblis  would  not  bow  to  Adam,  seeing  in  him  only  clay,  he 
was  driven  from  heaven,  and  he  and  his  devils  still  are 
pelted  by  angels  (with  shooting  stars),  whenever  the  devils 
listen  at  the  under  side  of  heaven  seeking  to  learn  wlni  i , 
to  be,  that  they  may  mislead  mankind  (Ixxii.  9,  etc.).1 
There  are  many  spiritual  powers  but  they  are  not  associates 
of  God  (not  real  gods).  Some  are  those  who  are  gods  to 
the  unbelievers ;  some  are  God's  servants  as  angels,  who  are 
not  "daughters  of  God"  (as  unbelievers  say);  some  are 
flame-born  Jinns,  to  whom  it  is  a  sin  to  pray.  Avoid  the 
abomination  of  idols  (xxii.  32). 2  Think  not  that  God  is 
afar  merely;  if  three  whisper  together  God  is  there  as  ilx- 
fourth  (Iviii.  8).8  He  is  nearer  to  man  than  his  jugular 
vein,  though  so  great  that  He  created  heaven  and  earth 
in  six  days  without  weariness  (i.  I5f.).  He  is  at  his  busi- 
ness every  flay  (lv.).  He  is  God;  save  him  there  is  no 
<><>'} ;  he  knows  the  unseen  and  the  visible;  he  is  the  Merci- 
ful, the  Compassionate,  the  King,  the  Holy,  tin-  i  v. 
the  Faithful,  the  Protector,  the  Mighty,  the  Repairer,  the 
Great.  Celebrated  be  his  praise  above  the  praise  of  all 

1  Mohammed  himself  preached  to  the  Jinns  when  men  had  re- 
jected him  (Ixxii.  i). 

2  There  is  little  indication  that  Mohammed  objected  to  statues 
and   paintings,  as  is  generally  assumed.    Idols  and  false  gods  are 
synonymous  terms  with  him  and  he  objects  not  to  the  portrait  hut 
to  the  wor 

8 Compare  in  the  Atharva  Veda:    "'If  two  men  talk  together  in 
secret,  god  Varuna  is  there  as  the  third." 


464  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

(others)  joined  with  him.  He  is  God,  Creator,  Maker, 
Fashioner;  His  are  the  excellent  names.  Whatsoever 
things  are  in  heaven  and  in  earth  celebrate  his  praises,  for 
God  is  the  Mighty,  the  Wise  (lix.,  a  Medina  Sura).  God, 
there  is  no  God  but  he,  the  living,  the  self -existent.  Slum- 
ber takes  him  not,  nor  sleep.  His  is  what  is  in  the  heavens 
and  what  is  in  the  earth.  Who  intercedes  with  him  save 
by  his  permission?  He  knows  what  is  before  them  and 
what  behind  them,  and  they  comprehend  naught  of  his 
knowledge  except  he  pleases.  His  throne  extends  over  the 
heavens  and  earth,  nor  does  it  weary  him  to  guard  them, 
for  he  is  high  and  grand  (the  "verse  of  the  throne,"  fre- 
quently inscribed  in  mosques,  also  a  Medina  passage,  ii. 

356).' 

There  is  little  specifically  Moslem  in  the  story  of  creation 
except  the  insistence  on  the  fact  that  God  did  not  rest  on 
the  seventh  day  (i.  37)  and  the  synchronous  creation  of 
Iblis  2  from  flame  and  Adam  from  clay.  The  earth  is  made 
for  man.  Clouds  let  down  water  for  him;  God  made  the 
sea  and  the  camel  of  the  sea  (ship)  for  him;  night  and 
day  were  made  for  him  to  sleep  and  work;  trees  subserve 
his  needs ;  animals  are  for  his  use.  It  is  an  anthropocentric 
material  creation.  But  man  himself  God  created  "  only  to 
adore  God  "  (li.  56).  God  burst  apart  the  originally  united 
mass  of  heavens  and  earth  and  flattened  out  earth  for 

1  Only  twenty-four  of  the  hundred  and  fourteen  Suras  (sections) 
of  the  Koran  are  from  the  later  Medina  period;   the  others  are 
referred   by   Arabic    scholars   to   various   periods    of    Mohammed's 
sojourn  in  Mecca,   from  the  first  to  the  fifth  year,  the  fifth  and 
sixth  years,  and  from  the  seventh  year  to  the  Hegira;  but  the  evi- 
dence is  more  or  less  doubtful  in  most  cases.     In  contrast  to  the 
magnificent  "  verse  of  the  throne,"  above,  the  earliest  period  is  in 
general  represented  by  greater  humility  and  more  personal  feeling; 
the  later  by  a  more  mechanical  style  with  a  growing  sense  of  power 
and  more  princely  tone  on  the  part  of  the  prophet. 

2  Iblis  or  Satan  is  not  the  accuser  but  the  "  Whisperer "  of  evil 
suggestions    (cxiv).    As  God  created  him;   so  the  believer  prays: 
"I  seek  refuge  from  the  Whisperer  "  as  also  "  I  seek  refuge  in  the 
Lord  of  light  from  the  evil  of  what  He  has  created,  and  from  the 
evil  of  the  night  and  witches"  (who  blow  on  knots,  cxiii), 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  465 

man's  needs,  pegging  it  down  with  mountains,  which  are 
sometimes  regarded  as  weights  to  keep  the  earth  from  fly- 
ing off.  Otherwise  there  is  no  peculiar  view  in  regard  to 
earth  itself  and  we  may  pass  on  to  the  consideration  of 
heaven  and  hell.1 

At  death  "  a  driver  and  a  witness  come  with  the  soul," 
which  the  angel  of  death  gently  releases  in  the  case  of  the 
believer  but  violently  tears  out  in  that  of  the  unbeliever  (1. 
20;  Ixxix.  if.).  Each  then  receives  his  account-book,  which 
is  preserved  in  the  "  high-places  "  or  in  the  "  prison  "  of 
hell  (Ixxxiii.  5-20)  and  is  presented  to  him  to  read,  in  the 
right  hand  if  he  is  pious,  in  the  left  bound  behind  his  back, 
if  sinful  (Ixxxiv.).  This  book  will  be  brought  forth  by  God 
on  the  resurrection-day.  Two  attendant  spirits  have  in- 
scribed it  with  every  act  committed  in  life,  though  every 
man's  fate  (literally  bird,  augury)  has  been  hung  around 
a  man's  neck  from  the  beginning  (xvii.  15). 2  The  book  and 
the  balance  (ci.)  seem  to  imply  a  difference  of  methods;  in 
the  latter  case  the  sinner  is  weighed  and  found  wanting,  a 
simpler  means.  When  judged,  the  pious  is  led  to  heaven,  a 
garden  of  bliss,  where  he  will  lie  for  ever,  dressed  in  green 
silk,  satin,  or  brocade,  on  green  cushioned  couches,  facing 
others  similarly  blessed,  all  wearing  silver  and  gold  brace- 
lets, and  enjoying  "  fruit  and  forgiveness."  The  forgiven 
and  blest  will  eat  bananas  and  other  fruits  without  indiges- 
tion and  drink  without  subsequent  headache  milk  and  honey 
and  wine,  which  is  carried  about  in  silver  goblets  by  youths 
and  is  tempered  with  streams  from  the  rivers  and  fountains 
of  Paradise,  so  that  camphor  and  ginger  and  tasnim  add  to 
its  taste.  For  further  enjoyment  there  will  be  chaste,  well- 
grown,  large-eyed  maids  of  the  same  age  as  the  believer. 

1  That  mountains  hold  earth  steady,  is  also  a  Vedic  idea.    In  the 
Koran  it  is  said  that  God  cast  mountains  upon  earth  lest  it  should 
move    (xvi.    15;   xxi.  32;   xxxi.  9).     They   are   like   stakes   to   the 
couch  of  earth  (Ixxviii.  6).     On  the  last  day  they  will  move  about 
(Hi.   10).     God  outstretched  earth  and  threw   upon  it  firm  moun- 
tains (1.  7). 

2  Written  "  on  his  forehead,"  in  the  late  view  (taken  from  India). 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

It  is  a  place  where  there  will  be  *'  no  folly  and  no  lie."  1 
The  sinner  in  hell  alternates  between  flame  and  boiling 
water,  has  a  dress  of  flame,  and  drinks  boiling  water  and 
pus.  Even  the  bitter  tree  of  hell  called  El  Zaqqun,  whose 
head  is  as  it  were  a  sheaf  of  devils,  is  regarded  as  providing 
a  "  boiling  "  food  which  the  sinner  has  to  eat  or  drink.2  No 
torments  save  heat,  maces,  and  the  implied  beating,  are  de- 
scribed, unless  the  fact  that  sinners  are  bound  together  be 
regarded  as  torment  Hell  is  not  guarded  by  devils  but  by 
nineteen  angels  (Ixxiv.  30).  The  sinner  is  described  as 
"  neither  dead  nor  alive  "  in  hell  fire  but  ardently  and  vainly 
longing  to  end  his  eternal  torment.  Conspicuous  for  its  ab- 
sence in  the  Koran  is  the  sensual  element.  Paradise  is  sen- 
suous but  not  sensual.  Its  tone  is  not  that  of  passion  but  of 
"  Peace,  peace  " ;  its  joys  are  those  appreciated  by  desert- 
riding  toilers,  cool  comfort  and  ease,  the  pure  water  and 
green  shade  to  which  the  thought  of  the  Bedouin  naturally 
turns.  The  maids  of  his  Paradise  are  modest  maids  "  re- 
straining their  looks"  (xxxvii.  45-50),  and  the  water  is 
without  "  insidious  spirit "  (ibid)  or,  if  wine  is  enjoyed,  it 
does  not  intoxicate. 

The  particularity  of  description  is  greater  in  respect  of 
heaven  than  of  hell.  Besides  green  cushions,  the  believer 
will  have  green  robes  of  silk  or  brocade  (xviii.  30;  here 
Paradise  is  Firdaus,  io5f.).  Apparently  all  must  pass 
through  hell :  "  Not  one  of  you  who  will  not  go  down  to 

1  Compare  Suras  xxxvii.  4pf. ;  xlvii.  i6f. ;  Iv  and  Ivi;  Ixxvi.  5f.; 
Ixxvii.  40;  Ixxviii.  35;  Ixxxiii.  26. 

2  For  the  torments  of  hell,  compare  xiv.  19,  50;  xx.  751.;  xxii. 
20;   Ixxxiv;   for  the  infernal   tree,   which   grows   where   even   the 
stones  are  red-hot,  xvii.  62;  xxxvii.  6of . ;   xliv.  45.    According  to 
xliii.  75,  unbelievers  in  hell  are  chained  to  devils  and  "there  is  no 
end  of  hell  for  them  though  they  cry  on  Malik"   (keeper  of  hell). 
In  Ixix.  31,  the  sinner  with  his  book  in  his  left  hand  is  first  fettered, 
then  broiled,  then  forced  into  a  chain  of  seventy  cubits  as  punish- 
ment because  "he  believed  not  in  God   nor   fed   the   poor."    The 
length  and  purpose  of  this  chain  is  unique  in  the  Koran,  as  is  the 
statement  in  the  same  chapter  that  on  the  last  day  the  heaven  shall 
be   cleft   asunder   and   God   appear   on   a   throne   borne   by   eight 
(angels). 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  46? 

it.  Then  We  will  save  those  who  fear  Us,  but  We  will 
leave  evil-doers  therein  on  their  knees"  (xix.  70).  But 
some  take  this  to  refer  to  the  passage  of  El  Aaraf ,  the  bridge 
between  heaven  and  hell.1  The  intercession  of  intercessors 
profits  not  in  hell  such  men  as  have  not  prayed,  nor  given 
to  the  poor,  but  have  plunged  into  discussions  and  called  the 
Judgment-day  a  lie  (ibid.  34).  Minor  sins,  called  abomina- 
tions of  Satan,  are  wine,  games  of  chance,  and  divining  (v. 
93). 2  As  believers  enjoy  bliss  for  aye,  so  sinners  suffer  for 
ever :  "  On  those  who  die  misbelieving  is  the  curse  of 
God,  and  of  the  angels,  and  of  mankind  together;  to  dwell 
therein  for  aye  (cf.  xxxix.  55)  ;3  the  torment  shall  not  be 
lightened  for  them,  nor  shall  they  be  respited  (or  looked 
upon";  ii.  I56f.).  In  the  Chapter  of  the  Believers  (xxiii. 
101)  it  is  implied  that  some  (Arabs)  believed  in  metempsy- 
chosis :  "  When  death  comes  to  any  one  he  says, '  My  Lord, 
Send  ye  (plural  of  respect)  me  back  (to  life)  that  haply  I 
may  do  right  in  what  I  have  left  ;  but  no !  Behind  him  is 
a  bar  (till  the  resurrection)."  4 

Of  the  seven  "  solid  "  heavens  (Ixvii.  3 ;  Ixxi.  141 ;  Ixxviii. 
lof.)  and  seven  hells  we  learn  little  in  the  Koran  itself,  only 
that  the  former  were  created  in  stories  in  two  days  and  God 
adorned  the  lowest  with  stars  like  lamps  and  furnished  it 
with  guardian  angels  (xli.) .  Later  tradition  gives  the  names 
of  the  seven,  partly  made  from  epithets  applied  in  the  Koran 
to  heaven  in  general,  such  as  "(We  have  made  them)  an 

1  Probably    the    whole    conception    had    filtered    to    Mohammed 
through  a  late  Jewish  arid  Christian  medium.     That  every  one  must 
go  to  hell  was  also  Jewish  belief  (but  not  Zoroastrian).     In  Hindu- 
ism the  idea  that  a  good  act  could  balance  a  bad  act  (and  so  save 
the  sinner  from  punishment)   was  not  entertained.     Every  bad  act 
was  punished  in  hell  even  if  committed  involuntarily. 

2  In  ii.  216,  Mohammed  says  that  there  is  profit  and  loss  in  wine 
and  the  game  of  chance  here  alluded  to;  but  the  disadvantage  is 
greater  than  the  advantage.     Divining  is  done  by  arrows.    The  list 
mentions  "  statues  "  also,  supposed  to  be  chess,  which  some  Moham- 
medans therefore  renounce. 

3  In  Ixxviii.  24  hell  is  a  place  in  which  "  to  tarry  for  ages." 

4  Saadia  (ninth  century)  says  that  some  Jews  believed  in  metem- 
psychosis. 


468  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

abode  of  peace"  (or  "garden  of  pleasure"),  partly  from 
the  names  Eden  and  Firdaus.  Still  less  individuality  is  to 
be  found  in  the  seven  hells,  Gehenna,  flaming  fire,  scorching 
fire,  etc.,  ending  with  the  abyss.  It  is  clear  that  the  resur- 
rection is  the  great  stumbling-block  to  the  unbelievers. 
Over  and  over  again  Mohammed  rallies  them  with  the  cry, 
"If  God  could  create  you  originally,  cannot  he  create  you 
again?  As  you  came  out  of  death  or  not-being  into  exist- 
ence by  stages,  as  the  embryo  evolves,  can  you  not  come 
out  of  death  after  life?"  But  what  the  soul  is  doing  be- 
tween death  and  Judgment  is  not  explained.  The  unbeliever 
mocks  (xxxvii.  15)  :  "  Shall  I  when  reduced  to  dry  bones 
become  alive  again  ? "  Mohammed  retorts,  with  the  only 
trace  of  humour  he  shows,  "  Wait  till  The  (Judgment)  Day 
arrives  and  you  will  find  out !  "  At  least  one  passage  (Ixvii. 
25-29)  seems  to  show  that  the  Day  was  not  far  distant: 
"  When  comes  the  Judgment  only  God  knows ;  but  ye  shall 
soon  know  who  is  mistaken"  (Mohammed  or  the  unbe- 
liever). The  usual  Mohammedan  belief  is  that  the  good 
rest  at  peace  till  the  Judgment  Day,  but  the  wicked  are  tor- 
mented even  in  their  graves. 

The  religion  of  Mohammed  is  not  one  of  form  but  of 
faith  and  good  works.  He  commends  pilgrimage  to  the 
Old  House  (xxii.  30)  and  the  attitude  of  devotion,  bidding 
the  believer  turn  to  Mecca  (originally  to  Jerusalem)  and 
hear  the  voice  that  calls  to  prayer,  and  come  to  the  mosque, 
leaving  traffic,  on  the  Day  of  Congregation  (Ixii.  9,  Fri- 
day).1 He  also  substitutes  (viii.  35)  four  sacred  months 
for  Jewish  fasts,  making  especially  a  fast  the  month  of 
Ramadhan  when  the  Prophet  received  the  revelation  of  the 
Koran.  Yet  if  one  is  ill  the  fast  may  be  postponed  till  an- 

1  Mohammed  says  that  the  early  part  of  the  night  is  "  more  up- 
right for  speech "  and  recommends  spending  half  the  night  in 
prayer  (Ixxiii.  6).  In  v.  9  he  tells  his  followers  to  wash  their 
faces  and  their  hands  before  they  pray  and  wipe  the  head  and 
feet,  but  if  more  convenient  they  may  use  sand  for  water.  Prayer 
is  here  substituted  for  the  "  whistling  and  clapping  hands "  (viii. 
35)  which  characterized  the  worship  of  idols. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  4^9 

other  time  or  one  may  redeem  oneself  by  feeding  the  poor 
(ii.  i8of.).  Pork  and  food  offered  to  idols  are  forbidden, 
but  Mohammed  makes  his  religion  on  the  formal  side  an 
easy  one.  "  God  desires  for  you  what  is  easy  not  what  is 
difficult"  (ibid.).  So  too  the  believer  need  not  puzzle  over 
the  dark  sayings  of  revealed  religion,  but  "  read  what  is 
easy  of  the  Koran"  (Ixxiii.  20).  As  to  sacrifice  he  says, 
"  Sacrifice  camels  to  eat  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,  saying  Bis- 
millah;  their  meat  and  blood  will  never  reach  to  God  but 
your  piety  will  reach  to  him  "  (xxi.  3of.)- 

Much  more  important  than  form  is  the  religion  of  good 
deeds.  "  Paradise  is  prepared  for  those  who  expend  in 
alms,  for  those  who  repress  their  rage  and  pardon  men; 
God  loves  the  kind"  (iii.  I2$f.).  This  is  said  in  connexion 
with  the  injunction  to  beg  forgiveness  of  God  for  wrong  and 
not  repeat  the  wrong,  for  God  forgives  the  repentant. 
"  Righteousness  is  not  that  one  turns  his  face  to  East  or  to 
West,  but  that  one  believes  in  God  and  the  last  day  and  the 
angels  and  the  Book  and  the  prophets  and  gives  one's  wealth 
for  love  of  God  to  kindred  and  orphans  and  the  poor  and 
the  son  of  the  road  (wayfarer)  and  beggars  and  captives, 
that  one  is  steadfast  in  prayer  and  gives  alms,  and  abides 
by  one's  covenant  and  is  patient  in  poverty  and  distress  and 
in  times  of  violence;  these  are  they  who  are  faithful  be- 
lievers" (ii.  I73f.).  "Wealth  and  children  are  an  adorn- 
ment of  the  life  of  this  world,  but  enduring  good  works  are 
better  with  thy  Lord,  both  as  a  recompense  and  as  a  hope  " 
(xviii.  44).  "Free  the  captive,  feed  the  orphan  and  poor, 
believe,  encourage  others  in  patience  and  mercy  "  (xc.  I5f.). 
"  What  one  loans  to  God  one  will  find  again  with  God  " 
(Ixxiii.  2of.).  At  first  this  "  loan  "  was  an  alms,  afterwards 
it  became  virtually  a  tribute  or  tax  for  holy  wars,  etc.,  but 
it  remained  "as  an  insurance  for  the  soul"  (ii.  265^). 
Kindness  to  women  and  children  is  an  especial  trait  of  Mo- 
hammedanism. Against  the  infanticide  of  his  day  Moham- 
med is  inexorable :  "  When  the  girl  that  was  buried  alive 
shall  ask  for  what  sin  she  was  slain,  the  sinful  soul  shall 


47°  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

know  what  it  has  done !  "  (Ixxx.  9).1  He  enjoins  that  "  be- 
lieving women  "  shall  not  be  given  back  to  their  unbelieving 
husbands  from  whom  they  have  fled  (Ix.  10)  ;  also  that  the 
purdah  or  curtain  shall  be  used  except  when  a  woman  con- 
verses with  fathers,  brothers,  sons,  and  nephews  (possibly 
not  before  the  Medina  period,  xxxiii.  55). 

It  is  perhaps  only  fair  that  a  prophet  should  be  judged 
by  his  acts  as  well  as  by  his  words.  Mohammed's  attitude 
toward  his  old  first  wife  was  always  admirable.  His  anger 
because  Ayesha  2  was  the  object  of  scandal  is  natural,  but  it 
was  perhaps  too  personal  a  matter  for  "  inspiration  "  on  the 
subject,  though  the  Prophet's  "  curse  on  all  those  who  impute 
evil  to  chaste  women  "  is  justified.  In  the  later  Sura  on 
this  matter  (Medina,  xxiv.),  Mohammed  prescribes  the  dress 
and  adornment  suited  to  good  women ;  they  shall  not  display 
ankle-ornaments ;  they  shall  pull  a  kerchief  over  the  bosom ; 
they  shall  not  display  their  ornaments  except  to  the  hus- 
band, father,  etc.  There  is  nothing  about  covering  the 
face.  On  the  other  hand,  Mohammed's  marriage  with  the 
wife  of  his  adopted  son  Zaid  and  his  connexion  with  a 
Coptic  girl  called  Mary  (xxxiii.  36;  Ixvi.),  can  scarcely  be 
called  admirable.  "  Inspired  "  verses  to  palliate  the  Proph- 
et's self-indulgence  seem  to  the  outsider  a  profanation. 
Mohammed  was  now  a  prince  and  thought  himself  entitled 
to  special  consideration  as  God's  apostle;  yet  it  is  difficult 
always  to  believe  in  his  complete  sincerity.  In  other  re- 
spects it  may  be  granted  that  success  convinced  Mohammed 
more  than  aught  else  that  his  side  was  that  of  God  and  that, 
religion  consisting  at  a  time  of  war  in  being  helpful  to  God, 
he  held  more  and  more  to  the  militant  attitude,  which  in- 

1  Mohammed  taunts  the  Arabs  with  ascribing  daughters  to  God 
and  then  being  angry  when  they  themselves  have  daughters   (xvi. 
59;  xliii.  15).    The  so-called  "  daughters  of  God"  are  (xxxvii  and 
passim)    angels    created   by    God    as    servants.    They    have    wings 
(xxxv.  if.)   in  pairs  or  threes  or  fours. 

2  Ayesha,  after  the  death  of  his  first  wife,  was  the  most  influ- 
ential member  of  Mohammed's  harem.     She  was  the  daughter  of 
Abu  Bakr. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  47 l 

eluded  recourse  to  trickery  and  cruelty.  God  himself  meets 
the  wiles  of  his  opponents  with  cleverer  tricks  and  strata- 
gems, as  of  old  when  the  Jews  were  crafty  "  and  God  was 
crafty,  for  God  is  the  best  of  crafty  ones  "  (iii.  45f . ;  cf .  vii. 
97,  "secure  from  the  craft  of  God").  It  is  a  believer's 
duty  to  overcome  rather  than  convert  the  foes  of  God.  Yet 
those  who  have  not  actually  fought  against  the  true  faith 
may  be  taken  as  patrons  and  one  must  act  righteously  and 
justly  toward  them  (Ix.  8f.).  Considering  the  mockery  and 
abuse  to  which  Mohammed  was  exposed,1  the  treachery  with 
which  he  was  encompassed,2  the  only  wonder  is  that  he 
could  at  any  time  speak  kindly  of  unbelievers.  He  discrimi- 
nates in  the  later  Koran  between  Jews  and  Christians,  say- 
ing that  the  latter  are  more  lovable  than  the  former,  though 
both  pervert  Scripture.  Mohammed's  wrath  is  most  un- 
bridled against  those  of  his  own  race  and  family  who  re- 
jected him  and  some  of  the  earlier  Suras  are,  as  said  above, 
little  more  than  curses  against  such  opponents.  With 
waxing  power  this  gross  personal  abuse  was  modified  or 
rather  it  gave  place  to  an  arrogant  assumption  of  power. 
Yet  the  Prophet  was  careful  not  to  encourage  flattery. 
"  Think  not  that  ye  oblige  me  by  becoming  converted ;  God 
obliges  you  by  directing  you  to  the  truth  "  (xlix.  I5f.).  In 
this  chapter  he  warns  against  the  too  facile  "  we  believe  " 
of  the  desert  Arabs.  True  believers  show  their  belief  by 
their  conduct  and  do  not  backbite  (compare  civ.,  "  woe  to 
the  slanderous  backbiter  ").  All  believers  are  brothers  and 
should  fight  for  the  faith,  "  with  wealth  and  person,  believ- 
ing in  God  and  His  Apostle."  Mohammed,  despite  his  igno- 

1  Instead  of  saying  Es  saldm  'halaika  ("peace  upon  thee")  they 
used  to  say  to  Mohammed  Es  sam  'hailaika  ("mischief  upon  thee"). 
When  he  spoke  of  Judgment,  they  asked  where  their  fathers'  dead 
bones   had   risen,   etc.    (Iviii.   9).     They   also   mocked   at   his    "old 
folks'  tales,  written  and  dictated  by  others  "  and  said  that  if  revealed 
the  Koran  should  have  been  revealed  all  at  once  (by  Michael,  not 
by  Gabriel  piecemeal).     Compare  xxv.  34  and  ii  gof,  "who  is  an 
enemy  of  Gabriel?"    They  also  effected  to  believe  that  "the  Lord 
the  Merciful"  implied  two  gods   (xvii.  no). 

2  His  own  people  planned  to  murder  him  before  he  fled  to  Yathreb. 


472  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ranee,  is  remarkably  free  from  superstition.  To  "  avoid  the 
door  "  and  enter  one's  house  by  a  hole  made  in  the  rear  on 
returning  from  Mecca,  he  says  is  folly,  although  popular 
practice.  Phases  of  the  moon  are  not  ominous  but  "  merely 
indicate  time"  (ii.  i85f.).  It  required  courage,  too,  to  re- 
fuse to  pray  to  the  Jinn  of  the  dark  valley  when  one  actually 
believed  the  Jinn  was  there,  as  did  Mohammed.  Of  his 
social  reforms  something  has  already  been  said ;  some  rested 
on  a  religious- basis  but  others  were  purely  ethical,  such  as 
his  condemnation,  as  "  fellows  of  hell-fire,"  of  money- 
lenders (ii.  276f.). 

Whether  Mohammed  was  acquainted  with  any  non- 
Semitic  religion  may  be  doubted,  though  he  alludes  to  Per- 
sian literature,  but  only  as  legends  invidiously  offered  the 
people  as  more  entertaining  than  the  Koran,  and  mentions 
Loqman  (Aesop,  xxxi.).  His  general  judgment  of  the 
"  blue-eyed  sinners  "  or  Greeks,  is  not  without  keenness : 
"  They  know  the  outside  of  life  but  heed  not  the  hereafter  " 
(xx.  102;  xxx.  6).  Probably  he  could  read,  though,  as  in 
the  case  of  Akbar,  this  has  been  questioned.  But  he  ap- 
pears to  have  known  the  Pentateuch  only  at  second  hand, 
much  as  he  knew  the  local  legends,  in  which,  however,  he 
believed  as  surely  as  he  did  in  the  Scriptures. 

Later  orthodox  theology  naturally  endeavours  to  make 
more  precise  the  teaching  of  the  Koran  but  does  not  question 
its  authority.  God  (the  God,  Allah)  is  defined  under 
ninety-nine  names  as  the  Merciful,  Compassionate,  Pro- 
tector, Creator,  Provider,  Destroyer,  Wise,  Loving,  Exalted, 
etc.  He  is  eternal,  indivisible,  formless,  comprehending  all 
but  comprehended  of  nothing.  His  angels  are  sexless,  pure, 
created  of  fire;  they  neither  eat  nor  drink  nor  have  issue. 
Chief  of  them  are  the  archangels,  Gabriel,  who  revealed  the 
Koran;  Mikail  (Michael),  the  guardian;  Israfil,  who  sounds 
the  last  trump;  and  Azrail,  the  angel  of  death.  Malik  is 
the  angel  presiding  over  Jehennum  (that  is,  Moloch  over 
Gehenna).  Kazan  presides  over  heaven  and  Munkir  and 
Nakir  are  two  angels  who  torment  infidels  in  their  graves. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  473 

Every  man  has  two  recording  angels.  Iblis  is  Saitan,  a 
fallen  angel  become  a  devil.  Jinns,  born  of  smokeless  flame 
and  living  especially  in  mountains  and  deserts,  are  usually 
malevolent  but  sometimes  benevolent.  Hell  and  heaven  each 
contains  seven  divisions  (as  explained  above).  Until  the 
resurrection  the  good  repose  at  peace  but  the  wicked  suffer. 
Before  The  Day  there  will  appear  a  guide,  Mahdi,  who 
will  fill  earth  with  righteousness ;  but  there  will  be  no  prophet 
after  Mohammed,  who,  next  to  Jesus,  is  the  Spirit  of  God 
(Ruha  'llah),  as  before  Jesus  came  the  three  great  prophets, 
Adam,  Noah,  Abraham,  and  sundry  minor  prophets. 

The  practical  duties  of  the  Mohammedan  are,  as  they 
have  always  been,  the  profession  of  faith,  which  originally 
ran,  "There  is  no  god  but  the  God  (Allah)/'  but  even  in 
Mohammed's  day  the  present  form  was  adopted :  "  There 
is  no  god  but  God  and  Mohammed  is  His  apostle  " ;  further, 
repetition  five  times  daily  of  a  formula  of  prayer,  while  the 
worshipper  bows  and  faces  Mecca,  after  suitable  ablutions, 
as  explained  above;  fasting,  especially  during  Ramadhan; 
almsgiving ; x  and  pilgrimage,  if  possible,  to  Mecca,  which 
includes  the  saluting  and  kissing  of  the  Black  Stone  and 
sacrifice  of  animals.  This  pilgrimage  is  really  a  relic  of 
pre-Mohammedan  days.  It  is  called  the  Hajj.  The  Jews 
also  made  a  feast  (hagg)  after  going  into  the  wilderness 
(Exodus  x.  9)  and  it  was  this  harking  back  to  Abraham 
which  made  it  possible  for  Mohammed  to  include  in  his 
ritual  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca.  He  intended  his  religion 
for  his  own  world  of  Arabia,  but  probably  before  his  death 
he  had  already  envisaged  its  wider  growth. 

On  Mohammed's  death,  as  he  had  no  son,  his  friend  Abu 
Bakr  became  the  first  Caliph,  "  successor,"  soon  succeeded 
by  Omar,  who  defeated  the  Persians  and  destroyed  the 
Byzantine  empire  in  Syria,  and  then  by  Othman  and  AH, 

1  The  formal  alms,  as  explained  above,  is  interpreted  as  a  tax 
(about  two  and  a  half  per  cent  of  one's  property)  for  military  (or 
State)  needs.  It  does  not  exclude  charity,  and  the  Mohammedan  is 
as  apt  to  give  alms  as  is  another. 


474  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

both  of  whom  were  assassinated.  The  history  of  these  few 
years  reveals  the  political  ambition  of  Mohammed,  whose 
own  ideas  were  of  course  carried  out  by  his  intimate  com- 
panions, and  the  change  from  a  religious  to  a  political  ideal. 
The  first  three  Caliphs  represented  the  Koreish  family  of 
Mecca.  The  true  succession,  however,  lay,  according  to  the 
Shiah,  or  Party  of  Ali,  with  the  son  of  Fatima,  Mohammed's 
daughter,  who  had  married  Ali,  himself  cousin  of  the 
Prophet.  This  son  was  Hosain,  whose  slaughter  at  Ker- 
bela  (Oct.  9,  680)  is  still  bewailed  by  the  Shiites  for  ten 
days.  The  Omayyad  governor  of  Syria  became  the  candi- 
date of  the  Othman  clique  at  Damascus  and  retained  power 
till  the  middle  of  the  eighth  century.  Islam  had  already 
begun  to  divide  itself  into  political  and  religious  parties. 
The  Omayyads  were  a  liberal  theocratic  faction  devoted  to 
Mohammedanism  as  a  conquering  worldly  power  quite  as 
much  as  a  religious  ideal.  The  Shiites  or  Aliites  opposed 
them  because  they  would  not  admit  the  divine  succession  of 
their  candidate.  But,  opposed  to  both,  there  soon  arose  a 
party  of  Aliites  who  were  pietistic  and  puritanical  and  dis- 
satisfied with  the  worldliness  of  both  the  Shiites  and  Omay- 
yads. These  were  the  Separators  or  Kharejites.  They  held 
that  works  were  more  than  faith  and  inner  purity  more  than 
external  cleansing  and  though  long  since  become  of  no  po- 
litical importance  they  still  retain  these  fundamental  charac- 
teristics. To  them  the  Caliphate  was  an  office  to  be  be- 
stowed only  on  the  worthiest  man,  irrespective  of  family; 
they  especially  opposed  the  Omayyads  and  later  influenced 
the  Berber  tribes  against  this  hated  family. 

The  Aliites  claimed  that  the  divine  spark  had  passed  to 
Ali  and  their  representative  and  that  the  Koran  as  Cod's 
word  was  the  Way  of  truth,  but  no  authority  rested  in 
Mohammed's  companions.  Hence  they  separated  from  the 
Sunni,  those  who  later  claimed  that  not  only  this  norm  but 
that  of  the  immediate  companions  and  followers  of  the 
Prophet  made  the  Way  or  Sunna  to  be  followed  by  the 
faithful.  The  Shiahs  or  Shiites  are  in  general  to  be  found 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  475 

in  Persia  and  Africa;  in  India  they  make  only  a  tenth  of 
the  sixty  millions  Mohammedans,  of  whom  the  mass  are 
Hindus  by  race  (sons  of  converts)  and  more  than  a  third 
Bengalis.  In  Persia  royal  blood  united  with  that  of  the 
Prophet  through  the  marriage  of  Hosain  with  a  Sassanide 
princess.1  It  is  impossible  here  to  review  the  many  divi- 
sions of  Islam,  past  and  present,  but  the  religious  signifi- 
cance of  one  division  cannot  be  passed  over.  Opposed  to, 
and  eventually  triumphant  over,  the  Syrian  house  of  the 
Omayyads,  arose  in  750  the  Bagdad  Caliphate  of  the 
Abbasides  (Abbas  was  Mohammed's  uncle),  who  secured 
also  the  Caliphate  of  Cairo  and  eventually  passed  their  re- 
ligious pretensions  over  to  the  Sultan  of  Turkey.  The 
change  of  power  from  Omayyads  to  Abbasides  resulted  in 
Islam  becoming  a  world-religion  instead  of  a  national  Ara- 
bian religion  and  did  much  to  further  th£  interest  of  Per- 
sian culture.  It  was  this  more  liberal  party  that  gave 
approval  to  Mutazilite  rationalism  (see  below).  Out  of 
this  party  grew  also  the  mysticism  which  began  within  a 
century  of  Mohammed's  time,  but  found  its  best  soil  in 
Persia,  where  God  became  a  God  of  love  and  man  became 
God.  In  such  a  school  blossomed  the  great  Persian  poets, 
believers  and  non-believers,  who  were  indeed  scarcely  to  be 
distinguished.2  Opposed  to  this  Caliphate  was  that  of  Spain. 
Although  the  Koran  has  always  been  the  ultimate  author- 
ity for  all  Moslems,  a  saying  attributed  to  Mohammed, 
namely,  that  "  whatever  has  been  well  said  I  have  myself 
said,"  made  it  easy  to  add  "  tradition  "  to  the  generally  plain 

1  It  is  questionable  how   far  the  monotheistic  tendencies  to  be 
seen  in  the  Kabir  and  Nanak  sects  of  India  revert  to  Moslem   (or 
Christian)  influence.    Akbar's  religion  was  a  liberal  Snfism  cr  Per- 
sian form  of  Islam.     Like  the  first  Caliph  he  had  a  Christian  wife, 
but  it  is  unlikely  that  either  of  them  suffered  his  harem  to  mould 
his  creed. 

2  This  Abbaside  Caliphate  raised  Nestorian  Syrians  to  high  office 
and  it  was  these   Syrians,  thus   patronized,  who   translated   Greek 
science  and  philosophy  into  Syriac  and  Arabic   (e.  g.,  Hippocrates, 
Galen,    Euclid,   Aristotle).    The   Arabs    received,   assimilated,    and, 
bettering  their  Syrian  instructors,  became  in  turn  the  teachers  of 
Europe  in  the  thirteenth  century. 


476  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  quite  circumscribed  teachings  of  the  Koran.  The  tra- 
dition, as  to  the  Way  of  Mohammed,  soon  included  that  of 
his  close  companions  and  what  they  taught  or  did  became 
authoritative  to  the  orthodox  (Sunni)  as  the  right  Way  or 
Sunna  and  was  accepted  as  Hadith  (authoritative  tradition), 
just  as  Tradition  in  India  soon  became  almost  as  authorita- 
tive as  Revelation.  The  Koran  itself  was  not  edited  in  a 
definitive  form  till  about  650.  But  it  was  freely  charged 
that  certain  Suras  were  forged,  as  certain  "  tradition  "  was 
forged.  Not  till  the  tenth  century  could  orthodox  Islam 
come  to  any  agreement  as  to  what  was  orthodox.  Then, 
however,  the  varying  opinions  were  sifted  and  there  thus 
came  into  existence  the  formal  Ijma  or  Agreement,  which 
since  then,  because  Mohammed  said  that  the  community 
could  never  agree  in  error,  has  been  the  third  work  recog- 
nized as  authoritative.  The  fourth  work  in  the  religious 
literature  is  a  body  of  reasoning  in  regard  to  doctrinal 
points.1  There  was  from  the  beginning  more  or  less  dis- 
agreement as  to  the  interpretation  of  verses  of  the  Koran, 
the  earliest  probably  involving  the  question  as  to  man's  free 
will.  This  was  not  altogether  a  purely  theological  point. 
Kadar  or  fatalism  was  upheld  by  the  Omayyads  of  Damas- 
cus as  a  principle  conducive  to  obedience ;  the  powers  that 
be  are  the  powers  divinely  ordained.  By  a  lucus  a  non  those 
opposed  to  fatalism  were  called  Kadarites,  while  those  up- 
holding this  doctrine  were  known  as  Jabarites,  believers  in 
blind  compulsive  power.  The  Kadarites  represented,  how- 
ever, a  pietistic  strain,  not  wholly  political  nor  intellectual. 
The  question  of  free  will  2  was  one  of  several  arising  from 
discussions  coming  into  the  church  after  the  founder's 
death.  Another  of  similar  sort  was  the  question  whether 

1The  Kiyas:  Books  of  practical  instruction  (Fikh)  were  based 
on  this  larger  literature. 

2  God  leaves  it  to  man  to  follow  His  guidance ;  who  forgets  Him 
He  forgets  and  abandons.  One  should  pray  "  guard  and  guide  me." 
Man's  dependence  on  God  is  implied.  Mohammed's  earlier  view 
inclined  to  free  will  but  later,  according  to  Grimme,  he  believed  in 
greater  dependence,  eventually  adopting  the  view  of  crass  predesti- 
nation. But  see  the  next  note. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  477 

God  himself  was  free,  or  so  bound  by  justice  that  he  was 
obliged  to  submit  to  limitations.  The  early  (eighth  cen- 
tury) Mutazilite  school  argued  that  God  was  under  the  neces- 
sity of  sending  prophets  to  save  man ;  that  pious  people  must 
be  recompensed  for  their  suffering;  and  that  even  animals 
were  to  be  recompensed  hereafter;  in  short,  the  justice  of 
God  limits  His  power.  Virtually,  therefore,  they  taught  that 
while  man  was  free  l  God  was  not.  God's  will  is  not  good 
as  such;  He  must  command  what  is  good.  The  same  reli- 
gious philosophy  derided  the  anthropomorphism  of  vulgar 
belief  in  God's  hands  and  feet,  etc.  Mutazilites  thus  opposed 
the  Hanbalite  religious  doctors,  who  represented  the  ex- 
treme wing  of  conservatism  and  to  whom  a  purely  spiritual 
God  was  contradictory  of  Mohammed's  words  (taken  lit- 
erally) .  Other  later  problems,  discussed  by  the  philosophers 
of  the  eighth  and  ninth  centuries,  were  whether  God  had 
attributes  and  whether  there  was  a  natural  law.  In  the 
tenth  century,  the  Asharites  renounced  the  rationalism  of 
the  Mutazilites  and  since  the  twelfth  century  the  views  of 
the  latter  have  been  given  up  by  the  orthodox.  Thus 
the  view  of  al-Ashari  (832-933),  who  followed  Hanbal, 
still  prevails,  according  to  which  laws  of  nature  are  really 
habits ;  the  absence  of  sunlight  is  not  what  makes  a  shadow, 
but  it  is  a  thing  created.  "  A  blind  man  may  stand  in 
China  and  see  a  gnat  in  Spain  " ;  the  eye  may  perceive  a 
smell  or  a  sound  as  well  as  see.  The  chief  points  held  by 
the  orthodox  Sunni,  who  follow  al-Ashari,  are  that  God's 
word  is  eternal  (uncreated)  and  that  there  will  be  a  cor- 
poreal resurrection.  Asharism  also  holds  that  the  individual 
is  not  wholly  free  nor  absolutely  fated ;  God  is  omnipotent. 
They  deny  the  Mutazilite  notion  of  a  place  hereafter  be- 
tween heaven  and  hell. 

1  Texts  of  the  Koran  (xviii.  28;  xxxviii.  25)  allude  to  "him  who 
will  believe  "  and  "  desire  leading  astray."  On  the  other  hand,  x. 
100  says  that  none  may  believe  except  with  God's  permission. 
These  are  all  Mecca  texts.  The  last  is  a  statement  of  fact;  the 
first  two  are  casual  allusions  from  which  only  a  theologian  would 
draw  any  theory  of  free-will. 


478  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

In  contrast  with  Judaism,  the  original  model  of  Islam, 
every  man  is  his  own  priest  and  deals  directly  with  his  maker, 
supplicating  God  for  assistance  and  for  forgiveness.  Mo- 
hammed himself  taught  that  he,  and  other  apostles,  could 
mitigate  God's  justice  by  appearing  as  an  intercessor  and 
this  doctrine  was  but  the  prototype  of  the  later  intercessory 
character  of  saints,  to  whom  Mohammedans  in  general  are 
as  devoted,  and  of  whom  they  make  the  same  substitute  for 
divinity,  as  other  religionists.  As  the  Sicilian  or  Russian 
invokes  his  patron  saint  and  as  such  a  saint  is  sometimes 
only  a  new  form  of  an  old  god,  so  the  patron  god  or  saint 
of  village  and  province  becomes  to  the  Mohammedan  the 
divine  power  whom  he  invokes  for  rain  or  safety.  Yet  no 
need  is  felt  for  priestly  mediators  and  no  sacrifice  is  required 
except  as  part  of  the  ancient  Hajj.  As  contrasted  with 
Judaism  also  Islam  recognizes  no  chosen  people ;  it  is  a  demo- 
cratic religion  making  converts  everywhere.  As  a  matter 
of  course  many  Mohammedans  nowadays  neglect  devotions 
and  may  go  to  the  mosque  but  twice  a  year;  but  few  reli- 
gions can  count  so  many  genuine  devotees. 

Islam  is  as  different  from  Mohammedanism  as  modern 
Christianity  is  from  the  teaching  of  Christ.  A  whole  millen- 
nium of  new  ideas  has  been  grafted  upon  it.  Mohammed 
himself  has  been  converted  into  a  sinless  being  who  per- 
formed miracles.  The  Sunna  of  the  first  three  centuries  is 
admittedly  authoritative,  but  the  orthodox  school  rejects 
the  "  degenerate  "  teaching  of  later  days  adopted  by  the 
Shiites,  who,  in  accordance  with  their  view  that  Ali  received 
and  passed  on  the  divine  succession,  incline  to  a  mysticism 
which  has  led  to  a  pantheistic  nihilism.  A  paganism  modi- 
fied by  Gnosticism  has  inspired  this  branch  of  the  church. 
The  Nusairiah  sect  even  treats  the  holy  family  of  Islam  as 
nature-gods.  A  marked  feature  here  is  the  absolute  obedi- 
ence demanded  of  the  religious  community  to  its  head,  sim- 
ilar to  the  Guru-cult  of  India,  the  head  being  regarded  as 
representative  of,  or  even  identical  with,  God.  Thus  the 
notorious  Assassins  yielded  implicit  obedience  to  their  Old 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  479 

Man  and  the  modern  Babis  and  Bahis  regard  their  founders 
as  divine.  In  part,  this  has  come  from  an  early  adoption  of 
Christian  asceticism  and  celibacy,  which  introduced  into 
Islam  the  pious  ascetics  called  Wanderers,  "  male  and  fe- 
male," x  whose  exaggeration  of  confidence  in  God  led  to  an 
attitude  of  indifference  and  quietism.  Clothed  in  suf,  coarse 
wool,  these  ascetics,  who  soon  became  mystics,  were  known 
as  Sufis.  As  early  as  the  seventh  century  they  adopted 
un-Mohammedan  (Neo-Platonic?)  ideas,  became  "drunk 
with  divinity,"  identified  the  individual  with  God,  gave 
themselves  up  to  religious  ecstasy  and  contemplation,  and 
interpreting  the  Koran  allegorically,  appeared  virtually  Indie 
or  Hellenic  rather  than  Mohammedan.  With  the  Kalenders 
or  Dervishes  they  reject  moral  laws  and  even  court  disap- 
proval. Ethically  these  heretics  "  pass  beyond  good  and 
evil  " ;  to  them,  u  love  alone  is  true  religion." 

Before  the  tenth  century  the  protest  had  been  made  that 
"  dirt  is  not  religion."  Although  physical  dirt  was  meant, 
moral  dirt  might  have  been  intended.  All  this  mixture  of 
late  philosophy  and  its  resultant  pantheism  was  repudiated 
once  for  all  by  al-Ghazali  (died  1109),  who  had  himself 
been  a  philosopher  and  Moslem  doctor  but  is  known  to  his- 
tory rather  as  the  "  destroyer  of  philosophers."  He  op- 
posed both  the  dogmatism  and  hair-splitting  of  the  Sunni 
schoolmen  and  the  gross  heresy  of  the  Sufites,  in  that  he 
rejected  their  pantheism,  though  he  admitted  into  orthodox 
belief  a  certain  amount  of  ethical  mysticism.  He  thus  be- 
came known  as  the  Regenerator  of  Religion.  His  real  serv- 
ice was  that  "  he  turned  the  church  from  theological  wran- 
gling to  the  spirituality  of  a  unifying  faith,"  and  gave  it  on 
its  orthodox  side  something  of  Shiite  liberality.2  On  the 

1  Compare  the  Buddhist  "Wanderers,"  who  may  have  served  as 
models,  though  Christian  examples  were  not  lacking.     Sufiism  re- 
flects different  "sources,"  because  they  teach  the  same  thing.     No 
historical  connexion  has  been  proved  with   Indian  thought,  but  it 
may  have  existed.     Balkh  was  then  a  seat  of  Buddhism. 

2  The  Agreement   (above)   had  already  given  binding  force  to  a 
mysticism  foreign  to  the  founder,  a  cult  of  saints,  which  he  re- 


480  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

other  hand,  the  Shiites  have  two  traits  which  lead  them  far 
afield  from  Mohammedanism.  They  have  long  given  up 
any  effort  to  make  Islam's  missionary  spirit  express  itself 
by  submission  of  its  foes  and  have  themselves  adopted  as 
their  motto  "  caution,"  or  submission  to  alien  authority  even 
to  the  extent  of  pretended  apostasy  (taught  as  a  virtue), 
while  they  wait  for  the  coming  of  the  Guided  One  or  Mahdi, 
that  is,  the  twelfth  or  hidden  Imam,  who  disappeared  in  the 
ninth  century  and  will  appear,  a  shadowless,  sinless,  infalli- 
ble, incarnate,  deity.  A  sect  of  Shiites  called  Ismailites  end 
the  visible  line  with  the  seventh  instead  of  the  twelfth  Imam. 
They  founded  the  African  Fatimite  dynasty  in  the  tenth 
century.  Philosophically  they  taught  that  each  revealer 
("  speaker  ")  of  truth  surpasses  the  last,  so  that  there  is  a 
gradual  revelation  of  the  world-spirit ;  consequently  that  their 
Imam  Ismail  (died  762)  surpassed  his  predecessor  Moham- 
med. They  too  interpreted  the  Koran  allegorically  and  re- 
garded literal  believers  as  heretics.  Prohibition  of  wine, 
fast,  and  pilgrimage  are  thus  nullified.  Their  belief  that 
the  Fatimite  Caliph  Hakim  would  reveal  himself  as  God 
incarnate  is  still  held  by  the  Druses  of  Lebanon.  The  Kho- 
jas  of  Indian  (under  Agha  Khan)  represent  this  sect;  they 
derive  from  an  Assassin  of  the  Fatimite  dynasty.  The  most 
moderate  Shiites  derive  from  Zeid  (tenth  century),  great- 
grandson  of  Hosein;  they  recognize  any  active  Aliite  as  an 
Imam  and  are  tolerant  of  the  Sunnis.  They  are  still  found 
in  southern  Arabia  under  the  name  of  Zeidites.  The  Shi- 
ites in  general  do  not  oppose  Sunna  but  define  Sunna  as  the 
traditional  Way  of  the  Prophet's  family,  not  of  his  compan- 
ions and  their  later  adherents.  Later  religious  modifica- 
tion sprang  up  on  Arabian  soil  and  was  developed  by  loans 

pudiated,  and  an  extreme  asceticism  adopted  from  without.  The 
Ijma  today  still  holds  the  Moslem  world  to  polygamy,  facile  divorce, 
concubinage,  and  slavery,  in  all  which  the  Prophet's  own  teaching 
improved  the  ethics  of  his  people  but  could  not  anticipate  the  higher 
views  of  today.  Yet  polygamy  is  allowed  only  to  those  able  to 
afford  it  and  slavery  affects  only  war-captives,  whom  it  is  a  merit 
to  set  free. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  MOHAMMED  48 1 

from  Aryan  sources.  Although  the  Shiah  party  represents 
that  freedom  from  literal  interpretation  and  from  received 
belief  which  makes  it  "  liberal,"  it  is,  as  Goldziher  has  shown, 
an  error  to  suppose  that  its  character  arose  in  reaction  from 
a  narrow  orthodoxy.  The  Shiites  arose  as  a  political  party 
and  when  in  power  were  more  intolerant  than  the  Sunni.  At 
the  present  time  not  the  Sunni  but  the  Shiites  take  Sura  ix. 
28  (which  speaks  of  unclean  unbelievers)  literally,  some  of 
them  even  "  wash  the  eyes  polluted  by  seeing  Europeans." 
The  Aliites  known  as  Metawile,  around  Baalbek,  destroy  a 
vessel  touched  by  a  Christian.  On  the  other  hand  it  cannot 
be  said  that  the  Sunni  have  failed  to  respond  to  modern 
liberal  views.  The  Malik  school 1  upheld  public  utility  as 
against  the  normal  law  and  thus  made  possible  the  introduc- 
tion of  banks  and  insurance  as  well  as  intercession  of  saints, 
all  of  which  are  forbidden  (see  above)  by  the  Koran.  The 
fact  is  that  Bida  or  innovation  if  enduring  enough  becomes 
custom,  so  that  "  it  became  Bida  to  oppose  Bida."  Thus 
Mohammed's  birthday  festival  was  opposed  as  late  as  the 
fifteenth  century,  but  was  finally  adopted  as  orthodox.  The 
most  conservative  Mohammedans  today  are  a  recent  sect 
called  Wahabites,  of  central  Arabia,  a  reactionary  body  op- 
posing the  use  of  the  rosary,  tobacco,  coffee,  etc.  In  gen- 
eral Islam  is  today  a  tolerant  religion 2  and  its  fatalism 
rightly  understood  is  the  expression  of  resignation  to  God's 
will.  It  is  of  course  pessimistic,  but  so  is  Christianity. 
Both  believe  that  the  world  is  evil. 

The  value  of  Mohammedanism  lies  in  its  influence  with 
rude  races.     As  it  represented  God  to  the  Arabs,  so  today 

1  This  and  the  Hanbal   school   already  mentioned   are  not   sects 
but   schools    of    religious    law,    of    which    four    are    orthodox,    the 
Hanifites,  Malikites,  Shafiites,  and  Hanbalites.     Traditionally  Islam 
has  73  sects  but  this  is  only  to  make  it  superior  to  Judaism  and 
Christianity  which,  according  to  the  same  myth,  boast  71   and  72 
sects. 

2  According  to  Hurgronje,  the  "faithful"  may  even  include  non- 
Moslem    people.     The    Moslem    Church    never    had    an    Inquisition 
though   more   liberal   philosophical   thought   coincided    with   greater 
intolerance.    This  is  ascribed  to  late  Zoroastrian  influence. 


482  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

it  is  an  effective  means  of  betterment  to  those  who  stand  on 
a  low  intellectual  and  ethical  level.  Its  prohibition  of  in- 
toxicants and  simple  creed  make  it  a  useful  educator  in 
Africa;  its  monotheism  stands  in  pleasing  contrast  with 
Hindu  polytheism.  It  is  at  its  best  when  it  has  least  politi- 
cal power. 

Far  removed  from  Mohammed  is  the  "  Mohammedan " 
Babi  movement.  It  reverts  to  the  theory  of  gradual  pro- 
gressive revelation.  Mirza  AH  Mohammed  of  Shiraz,  b. 
1820,  believed  he  was  the  Imam  and  Bab  (door)  of  salva- 
tion. He  adopted  the  mystic  combination  of  letters  taught 
by  the  earlier  Hurifis,  preached  the  brotherhood  of  man  and 
equality  of  woman,  and  was  put  to  death  in  1850.  He  was 
followed  by  the  Bahi,  who  died  in  1892  and  was  succeeded 
by  Abbas  EfTendi.  While  the  Bab  is,  in  a  way,  a  reform  of 
a  sect  of  Islam,  the  world-religion  of  the  Bahis  has  no  claim 
to  be  anything  except  a  Persian  form  of  mixed  religious 
creeds,  mystic  philosophies,  and  social  reforms.  Similar 
tendencies  have  produced  Mahdi  religions  in  India,  such  as 
the  Ahmediyya,  a  modern  sect  aiming  at  universality. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

E.  H.  Palmer,  The  Qur'an  (Koran),  translated  in  Sacred  Books 

of  the  East,  vi,  ix. 

T.  Noldeke,  Geschichte  des  Qoran,  2nd  ed.,  Leipzig,  1909. 
Ignaz    Goldziher,    Mohammed   and   Islam,   translated   by   Mrs. 

Seelye,  New  Haven,  1917. 

D.  B.  Macdonald,  Aspects  of  Islam,  New  York,  1911. 

C.  Snouck  Hurgronje,  Mohammedanism,  New  York,  1916. 
T.  W.  Arnold,  Preaching  of  Islam,  2nd  ed.,  London,  1913. 
H.  Grimme,  Mohammed,  Miinster,  1895. 
R.  A.  Nicholson,  The  Mystics  of  Islam,  London,  1914. 

E.  G.  Browne,  Materials  for  the  Study  of  the  Babi  Religion, 

London,  1918. 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-TWO 

GREEK    RELIGION 

ABOUT  sixteen  hundred  B.  c.,  Greece  was  over-run  by  Cretan 
invaders  of  higher  culture  (Minoan),  who  in  turn  were 
overcome  by  tribes  of  Aryan  origin  (Achaeans)  from  about 
1500  to  noo  (Dorian  invasion).  The  original  inhabitants, 
"  Pelasgian,"  formed  a  third  element.  Another  stream  of 
Aryans  passed  from  the  North  into  Asia  Minor,  and  many 
northern  tribes  conquered  by  Achaeans  or  Dorians  may 
have  been  their  Aryan  predecessors.  It  is  impossible  to  dis- 
tinguish the  Pelasgian  from  the  Cretan  Mediterranean  type. 
The  latter,  and  probably  the  former,  had  idols  and  wor- 
shipped a  great  mother-goddess  of  productivity  rather  than 
a  sky-god,  while  the  Ayrans  worshipped  the  sky-god  as 
chief  deity  and  were  less  advanced  in  religious  art.  Both 
races  probably  worshipped  ancestors.  In  general,  the  Medi- 
terranean type  of  religion  was  more  magical  and  mystical ; 
its  spirits  were,  as  compared  with  the  Aryan  type,  less  f  rani: 
and  human.  By  the  former,  divinity  was  worshipped  more 
as  a  goddess  or  life-potency ;  by  the  latter,  as  a  superhuman 
man ;  to  the  former,  the  divine  was  of  earth ;  to  the  latter, 
of  heaven.  After  settling  in  Greece,  the  Achaeans  adopted 
many  of  the  deities  of  the  conquered,  who  may  have  in- 
cluded tribes  of  the  Achaeans'  own  race,  as  subordinate  fig- 
ures, though  it  was  a  long  time  before  the  Cyprian  goddess  of 
love,  the  Thracian  god  of  war,  and  the  goddess  of  agri- 
culture felt  quite  at  home  on  Olympus,  where  the  Aryan 
sky-god  lived  with  his  court.  The  Aryans  as  they  set- 
tled down  adopted  magical  rites  to  aid  agriculture,  in 
which  as  a  host  of  invading  soldiers  they  at  first  felt  little 
interest,  probably  deeming  farming  the  task  of  women  and 

483 


484  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

slaves.  More  interest  was  shown  in  herding  and  their  chief 
productivity-gods  were  of  this  type,  Apollo,  Hermes,  and 
Poseidon,  whom  they  brought  with  them  from  northern 
Greece,  as  they  did  Dionysos,  the  god  of  general  fertility. 
As  such  the  last  was  not  at  first  esteemed  very  highly  out- 
side of  his  Thracian  home,  though  afterwards,  adopted  as 
god  of  mystic  madness  induced  by  intoxication,  he  was 
converted  into  a  '*  son  of  the  sky-god."  In  the  earlier 
period,  the  sky-god  himself  was  all  the  god  the  Aryans 
needed  for  agriculture,  as  he  sent  rain,  so  that  he  united  the 
conception  of  a  god  ruling  in  the  sky  with  that  of  one  gov- 
erning life  underground.1 

Since  the  mystery-religion  of  Greece  and  the  worship  of 
female  powers  came  earlier  than  the  Aryan  religion,  Greek 
religion  as  a  whole  is  often  mistakenly  represented  as  evolv- 
ing from  the  lower  to  the  higher  form.  No  greater  mistake 
can  be  made.  There  was  no  such  evolution.  The  Aryan 
invaders,  Achaeans  and  Dorians,  simply  adopted  and  adapted 
some  of  the  lower  elements  native  to  the  race  they  conquered, 
or  long  since  brought  into  Greece  from  Crete,  some  parts 
of  which  may  have  come  originally  from  Egypt.  No  fetish 
or  ghost  ever  developed  into  Zeus.2  It  is  characteristic  of 
the  Achaean  religion  that  it  had  neither  totemism  nor 
tribal  initiation,  nor  did  its  worshippers  stand  in  fear  of 
ghosts  and  ghouls.  It  was  a  virile  man's  religion,  recog- 
nizing women-deities  of  love  and  domestic  art,  not  as  dark 
earth-potencies,  but  as  shining  celestial  spirits.  There  is 
not  the  slightest  evidence  that  it  came  from  Crete  like  that 
of  the  preceding  race  in  the  Peloponnesus.  But  Zeus, 
though  originally  so,  was  no  longer  the  "  bright "  Sky,  any 
more  than  the  Teutonic  Thor  was  Thunder.  He  had  al- 

1  Hence  Zeus  georgos   (like  Poseidon  georgos,  below),  whence, 
eventually,  "  St.  George." 

2  For  various  conflicting  views  as  to  the  aborigines  see  Ridgeway, 
Origin  of  Tragedy,  Cambridge,  1910,  who  believes  that  the  Greek 
aborigines  were  akin  to  the  Lycians   (the  Achaeans  being  Celts)  ; 
Farnell,    The   Higher  Aspects    of   Greek   Religion,   London,    1911; 
and  Leaf,  Homer  and  History,  London,  1915.     Zeus  was  a  moun- 
tain-god of  Olympus  and  elsewhere  as  well  as  a  god  of  the  sky. 


GREEK  RELIGION 

ready  become  a  family-man  and  chief  of  various  clan- 
gods.1  The  naturalized  Achaeans  set  beside  him  as  his 
"  wife  "  the  dethroned  female  deity  of  Argos,  Hera,  arche- 
type of  monogamous  union  as  "  sacred  marriage."  As  his 
brother  they  took  Poseidon,  who  in  his  own  place  and  for 
some  time  after  his  adoption  had  been  as  important  as 
Zeus.  Less  clear  to  the  Achaeans  was  the  form  of  another 
"  brother,"  called  Hades,  to  whom  was  assigned  the  under- 
world, about  which  the  Achaeans  troubled  themselves  very 
little.  But  to  this  brother  of  Zeus  they  gave  as  wife 
Persephone,  daughter  of  the  corn-mother,  Demeter,  who 
may  have  been  an  Aryan-renamed  goddess  native  to  the  orig- 
inal inhabitants,  or  an  original  Mother  Earth,  interpreted 
after  the  fashion  of  the  farming  population.  She,  too,  was 
not  originally  an  Olympian  but  as  goddess  of  the  earth  and 
tilth  and  above  all  as  Mother  she  became  the  lofty  type  of 
wifely  motherhood ; 2  until  her  image,  spiritual  and  material, 
blended  with  that  of  the  Christian  Mother. 

As  Ares  of  Thrace  and  Aphrodite  of  Cyprus  were  called 
son  and  daughter,  respectively,  of  Zeus,  so  Apollo,  "  dear 
to  Zeus,"  was  made  his  son,  whose  sister,  like  Apollo  armed 
with  bow  and  arrow,  was  Artemis,3  goddess  of  life  and 
death.  As  daughter  of  Zeus  also  is  recognized  Athene, 
goddess  of  art  and  skill  at  home  and  in  the  field,  chief  deity 
of  Troy  as  well  as  chief  goddess  of  the  Achaeans  and  of 
Athens.  Kronos,  an  old  god  of  field  and  harvest,  later  con- 

*A.  B.  Cook,  Zeus,  vol.  i,  London,  10.14,  seeks  to  show  that  the 
Greek  Zeus  was  still  the  sky  as  in  5ios,  g»/5ios.  He  is  more  success- 
ful in  proving  that  Zeus  was  not  originally  sun  or  stars.  As  family- 
man  Zeus  is  associated  with  the  family-cult  as  guardian  of  the 
home. 

2  "  There  is  nothing  greater  than  a  mother,"  says  a  poet  of  the 
fourth  century.     Family-life  is  religiously  guarded.     On  the  sacred- 
ness  of  marriage  and  the  possibility  of  a  mystic  religious  element  in 
the  early  rite,  see  Farnell,  op.  cit.,  p.  3of.    Adulterers  sinned  against 
Zeus  and  Hera  and  were  excluded  from  religious  precincts.    Zeus 
guarded  the  honour  of  the  family  and  the  father's  right. 

3  Artemis  is  a  type  of  the  vague  female  potency  of  life  anthropo- 
morphized as  goddess  but  remaining  ever  unsullied.     She  has  no 
organic  connexion  with  Apollo.     With  her  were  identified  others  of 
her  type,  Britomartis,  of  Crete,  Ma,  of  Cappadocia,  etc. 


486  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

fused  with  Chronos,  was  made  father  of  Zeus.  The  figure 
of  Hestia  (hearth,  hearth-fire),  who  scarcely  has  personality 
in  Homer,  becomes  in  Hesiod  the  daughter  of  Demeter  and 
Kronos.  Hephaistos,  called  son  of  Zeus,  was  the  local  fire- 
god  of  Lemnos,  though  representing  the  forge-fire  rather 
than  the  hearth.  While  the  nature-elements  in  Poseidon 
and  Hephaistos  are  veiled,  nature-worship  comes  out  more 
clearly  in  the  direct  worship  of  natural  objects  such  as 
water  in  springs  and  rivers  (the  Alphaios,  etc.),  or  of 
(the  muses)  hills  and  springs,  in  Thrace  and  Boeotia.  Pan 
in  Arcadia  represents  a  cult  of  land  and  herds  introduced 
quite  late  (fifth  century)  into  Athens.  Holy  stones  and 
posts,  destined  to  become  idols  and  gods,  were  perhaps 
adopted  from  the  original  inhabitants,  such  as  the  stone 
Hermes,  originally  a  figure  not  unlike  that  of  Priapos. 
Dryads,  who  die  with  the  trees,  are  later  personifications 
of  sacred  trees,  such  as  ash,  oak,  and  cypress ;  especially  the 
laurel  in  Tempe  and  the  palm  in  Delos.  In  Boeotia,  the 
aboriginal  cult  of  serpents  was  connected  with  that  of 
Asklepios,  also  with  the  souls  of  the  dead.  Zeus  himself, 
affected  by  these  lower  cults,  takes  the  forms  of  animals, 
as  Dionysos  takes  the  form  of  a  bull  or  goat,  and  other 
gods  either  take  animal  forms  or  have  animal  characteristics, 
Apollo  being  associated  with  the  dolphin,  Demeter  appear- 
ing with  a  horse's  mane,  etc.  In  such  phenomena,  the 
bull-form  is  regarded  as  the  god  himself,  and  in  the 
case  of  aboriginal  deities,  this  may  have  been  the  first 
form. 

Among  the  Greeks  a  tendency  is  observable  to  regulate 
groups  of  spirits  by  extending  the  reach  of  the  sacred  num- 
ber three.  Three  days  of  mourning  and  a  threefold  invo- 
cation of  the  dead  give  a  sacred  character  to  the  number, 
which  is  then  applied  to  sacred  or  divine  characters.  So 
arise  groups  of  three  Graces,  Fates,  Eumenides,  Hours,  and 
thrice  three  Muses.  These  triads  are  usually  female  though 
sometimes  male,  but  they  never  lead  to  the  conception  of  a 
trinity.  Thus  Homer  has  three  great  brother  gods,  Zeus, 


GREEK  RELIGION 

Poseidon,  Hades.  Zeus,  Hera,  and  Athene  or  Apollo  make 
a  triad  of  a  family  (Hera  takes  the  place  of  Dione,  Juno). 
But  the  advent  of  the  high  Olympian  gods  introduced  by 
the  Achaeans  reduced  most  of  the  earlier  local  goddesses  to 
mythical,  quasi  historical  characters.  Cassandra  and  Helen 
were  perhaps  originally,  or  later  took  the  place  of,  such  local 
goddesses,  with  temples  and  images  of  their  own.  Others, 
as  has  been  said,  became  forms  of  greater  goddesses,  as 
Kallisto,  the  Bear-maid,  became  a  form  (name)  of  Artemis 
Kalliste,  just  as  local  heroes  were  either  absorbed  in  or  be- 
came titles  of  great  gods,  Zeus  Agamemnon,  Meilichios, 
Philios,  etc.,  unless,  indeed,  their  legend  was  too  savage  to 
be  adopted,  when,  like  Tantalos,  Sisyphos,  and  others,  they 
became  mere  types  of  barbarism,  historic  characters  meet- 
ing a  deserved  fate.  Some  of  these  were  perhaps  actual 
survivals  of  Cretan  dominion  in  southern  Greece. 

Like  the  Roman  Indigitamenta,  there  were  also  Powers 
of  one  office,  whose  duty  was  later  absorbed  by  the  higher 
divinities.  Increase,  Auxo,  Thallo,  Karpo,  and  such  genii 
of  fruitfulness  found  among  all  the  Indo-Europeans  prob- 
ably belong  to  Achaean  as  well  as  to  Mediterranean  cults. 
Some  appear  as  heroes,  like  Triptolemos,  the  ploughman  or 
Erechtheus  the  ploughman,  connected  with  Erichthonios, 
hero  and  father  of  fruitful  Kekrops,  a  serpent-tailed  hero 
as  god  of  crops.  Iphigeneia  is  by  name  (the  spirit  of) 
animal  fruitfulness,  whose  cult  was  lost  in  that  of  Artemis. 
Probably  older  than  Apollo  are  thus  latros,  Paian  (puri- 
fier), and  lason,  and  the  Thessalian  Chiron.  They  are 
simply  "  the  healer  "  in  one  form  or  under  one  name  or  an- 
other, possibly  original  hero-spirits  in  some  cases.  In  some, 
there  is  only  the  personification  of  emotion  (Fear,  Love)  or 
abstractions,  Ploutos,  Wealth,  Hygieia,  Health;  Tyche, 
Fortune;  Eirene,  Peace;  Themis,  Justice.  These  powers 
tend  to  become  mere  attributes  of  gods  of  greater  calibre,  as 
local  gods  merge  with  and  help  to  amplify  the  names  of 
great  gods,  for  example,  Zeus  Lykeios  and  Apollo  Lykeios, 
who  through  a  misunderstanding  unite  Zeus  with  the  god 


488  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

called  Lykos  in  Boeotia  and  Arcadia.1  An  excellent  exam- 
ple of  such  a  combined  divinity  is  the  death-goddess  of 
Homer,  Persephone,  who  was  united  with  Despoina  and 
with  Hekate  and  even  with  Artemis  as  local  goddesses  of 
the  same  sort  current  in  Arcadia,  and  yet  was  united  as  well 
with  the  Maiden  (Kore)  or  vegetable  divinity.  Environ- 
ment again  makes  of  a  tribe's  chief  god  another  character 
when  the  scene  shifts.  For  this  reason  the  fertility-  and 
water-god  Poseidon  coming  from  the  north,  like  Apollo, 
becomes  a  sea-god  when  the  tribe  worshipping  Poseidon 
comes  to  settle  by  the  sea.  Early  epithets  name  him  georgos 
and  phytalmios,  an  agricultural  plant-god,  and  his  "  horse  " 
form  is  derived  not  from  billows  as  sea-chargers  but  from 
the  cultivation  of  horses.  His  cult  even  in  Laconia,  where 
he  is  Demeter's  husband,  was  older  than  that  of  Zeus  and  in 
Athens  older  than  that  of  Pallas  Athene,  the  culture-goddess. 
Hera  herself  was  a  goddess  of  cattle  and  of  well-watered 
meadows,  for  which  reason  she  is  a  water-goddess  in  Argos 
and  still  bears  in  Homer  the  title  "  cow-eyed,"  while  the 
pomegranate,  emblem  of  fertility,  is  sacred  to  her,  and  Hebe 
(Spring-time)  is  her  daughter.  Some  scholars,  however, 
think  2  that  she  originally  represented  the  moon  as  a  horned 
goddess,  patron  of  agriculture,  and  a  deity  especially  of 
women,  as  the  moon  often  is.  More  probably  she  was  the 
greatest  female-power  of  her  state  and  as  such  became 
"  wife  "  of  Zeus  (in  place  of  Dione)  as  well  as  moon. 

The  animal-form  of  a  god  is,  if  anything,  ruder  than  the 
vegetable  form,  as  cattle-raising  usually  precedes  the  settled 
life  of  agriculture.  Hence  some  of  the  rudest  religious 
types  belong  in  this  category,  such  as  that  of  Hermes,  al- 
ready mentioned,  a  god  of  animal  productivity.  The 
Homeric  hymn  sings  him  as  a  thief  of  cattle ;  he  is  also  the 
slayer  of  the  herdsman  Argos  ;  early  art  represents  him  with 
a  ram's  head.  Herodotus  tells  us  that  the  symbol  of  pro- 

1  Lykos  is  the  wolf  (god),  but  lykeios  is  light-god  (lyke~). 

2  Miss  Harrison  suggests  that  Hera  is  the  same  word  as  English 
Year!    Leaf,  op.  cit,,  p.  262,  note. 


GREEK  RELIGION  4^9 

ductivity  was  especially  his.  He  was  to  Argos  what  Pan 
was  to  Arkadia.  Probably  he  was  originally  a  local  god  of 
productivity  in  general ;  hence  his  chthonic  character,  his 
office  of  psychopomp,  and  his  control  of  riches  (metal 
wealth)  found  in  the  earth.  He  guides  and  guards.  He 
guards  both  graves  and  paths  and  marks,  with  his  Hermes- 
stone,  the  paths  dividing  property.  As  God  of  wealth  also 
he  is  god  of  the  market-place  (Mercurius  to  the  Roman) 
and  of  cleverness  and  trickery.  As  a  tricky  god  he  fathers 
Autolykos,  grandfather  of  Odysseus,  who  inherits  his  sly- 
ness. The  later  athletes  also  honoured  him  as  god  of  the 
tricks  helpful  to  wrestlers.  In  many  respects  Hermes  is 
thus  a  little  counterpart  of  Apollo,  also  a  god  of  shepherds 
and  cattle-raisers  and  fruitfulness,  whose  relations  with  the 
nymphs  (like  that  of  Krishna  in  India)  date  from  this  con- 
ception of  him.  An  early  symbol  of  Apollo  is  the  goat  or 
ram,  whence  he  is  identified  with  Karneios,  a  local  ram-god. 
But  he  is  also  an  agricultural  god,  who  introduces  or  favours 
fruit-culture  and  bee-culture.  He  overcame  Hyakinthos, 
that  is,  his  cult  took  over  that  of  a  local  god  of  that  name. 
He  became  also  a  sea-god  of  fishes  typified  as  the  dolphin- 
form  known  in  Crete  and  brought  from  Crete  into  Elis  as 
the  Delphinios  Apollo,  whose  title  was  taken  by  Delphi, 
where  Apollo  assumed  the  oracular  powers  originally  be- 
longing to  the  earth-goddess,  and  killed  her  snake-guardian 
Pytho.  Finally  in  Delos  Apollo  became  a  sun-god,  so  that 
the  cult  of  the  older  Helios  is  lost  in  that  of  Apollo,  as  was 
that  of  the  medicinal  god  Phoibos  and  other  local  gods. 
Apollo's  rise  to  the  position  of  sun-god  stands  parallel  to 
that  of  his  sister  Artemis  to  the  position  of  moon-goddess 
from  the  earlier  status  of  a  goddess  of  animal-productivity. 
Apollo  came  to  Rome  as  "healer,"  medicus,  that  is,  as 
Phoibos. 

It  is  clear  that  the  early  Greek  divinities  do  not  arise  from 
moral  contemplation.  They  are  themselves  in  story  im- 
moral or  unmoral.  They  are  not  abstractions,  nor  usually 
Numina,  but  are  anthropomorphic  deities.  No  idea  is  ap- 


490  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

parent  of  a  god  who  omnipotently  and  justly  rules  the  world. 
The  gods  themselves  injure  and  deceive  men.  Yet  in  the 
conception  of  divinity  foreshadowed  by  Moira,  Fate,  there  is 
a  rapid  growth  toward  that  of  an  over-ruling  Providence. 
The  amalgamation  of  local  gods  into  one  figure  tends  to 
increase  the  grandeur  of  that  figure  and  with  the  growth 
of  ethical  ideals  the  idea  of  a  god  corresponding  to  those 
ideals  begins  to  emerge.  As  receiver  and  absorber  of  the 
benefits  thus  bestowed  upon  the  gods  by  more  civilized  men, 
Zeus,  the  guardian  of  the  town,  stands  foremost,  as  his  po- 
sition at  the  head  of  the  pantheon  made  it  natural  that  he 
should  be  most  prominent  ethically  as  he  was  physically. 
He  is  themistios,  the  god  of  right  order.  He  is  not  above 
Fate,  which  appears  as  a  blind  impersonal  power;  but  he 
orders  the  world,  sees  all,  notes  wrong  and  right,  upholds 
the  family,  befriends  the  stranger,  aids  the  suppliant,  and 
is  the  saviour  and  purifier  of  men,  as  he  is  the  giver  of  life, 
happiness,  and  power.  Later,  Zeus  becomes  a  world-prin- 
ciple ;  in  the  third  century  he  is  even  "  interpreted  "  as  a 
ghost  (doctrine  of  Euhemerus),  but  in  the  earlier  religion 
he  is  a  humanized  spirit  of  nature,  moral  as  man. 
I  In  Homer,  the  cult  of  such  gods  as  he  recognizes  appears 
to  be  one  of  great  simplicity.  Every  feast  was  a  sacrifice. 
Temples  and  shrines  were  known,  but  the  former  might  be 
a  mere  grove  or  a  mountain-top  and  the  shrine  was  not  nec- 
essarily in  a  fixed  place.  Anywhere  one  might  build  an 
altar  and  sacrifice  animals  to  a  god.  Altars,  idols,  and  sym- 
bols of  divinity  belonged  also  to  the  Cretan  cult,  as  did  the 
worship  of  trees,  stones,  and  animals.  There  was  no 
Achaean  priesthood,  though  professional  priests  existed; 
later  came  also  priestesses.  Priests  were  prayer-makers 
and  prophets,  holy  men,  but  not  celibate ;  there  was  no 
priestly  caste.  To  honour  the  gods,  communicate  with  them, 
and  to  win  their  help  or  avert  misfortune  were  the  objects 
of  prayer,  from  which  at  first  the  formal  elements  of  thanks- 
giving and  praise  seem  to  have  been  absent,  though  at  a  later 
date  fully  recognized.  t  Even  the  great  gods  acted  as  house- 


GREEK  RELIGION  491 

guardians,  as  in  India  (not  in  Rome).  Sacrifices  were  an- 
nual and  occasional.  Human  sacrifice  to  Zeus  and  other 
gods  is  mentioned  in  legend  1  and  in  early  times  was  common 
to  the  mainland,  to  Crete  and  to  the  islands  of  the  Aegean, 
where  children  as  well  as  men  were  dismembered  and  de- 
voured in  magical  rites  to  increase  the  strength  of  the  god. 
Wine  was  also  poured  out  to  a  god  on  taking  an  oath,  at 
meals,  and  on  other  special  occasions.  '  The  early  gods  were 
not  supposed  as  a  class  to  be  concerned  with  moral  acts, 
but  by  the  seventh  century  purification  was  demanded  by 
them  in  the  case  of  murder ;  and  ceremonial  purification  was 
also  religiously  expected  after  childbirth,  or  when  one  was 
initiated  into  religious  mysteries.  Sacrifice,  scape-goats,  or 
water-ablution  were  the  means  employed  for  purification, 
which  was  at  first  only  ritualistic.  The  will  of  the  gods  was 
ascertained  not  only  by  oracles  but  through  victims,  dreams, 
flames,  birds,  snakes,  bones,  etc.  In  classical  times  the 
priests  were  State  officials  and  the  State  religion  was  largely 
a  formal  observance  of  rites,  including  the  oath  and  curse 
(which  was  rather  magical  than  religious).2  Months  and 
days  were  dedicated  to  certain  gods.  Thus  the  first  and 
seventh  day  of  every  month  were  Apollo's.  Yet  there  was 
no  intimate  connexion  with  the  Olympian  gods.  Even 
later,  "  to  love  God  would  be  improper,"  says  Aristotle. 
Morality  was  supported  more  by  appeals  to  the  right  order 
of  the  universe  or  the  right  way  (Themis,  Dike)  as  abstract 
divine  powers,  than  to  the  gods  of  Olympos.  Only  the 
Fates,  even  in  Hesiod,  are  moral  punishers  of  crime.3  The 

1  At  the  funeral  of  Patroklos  (II.  xxiii.  175)  Achilles  sacrificed  on 
his  pyre  horses,  dogs  and  Trojans,  apparently  to  accompany  the 
shade  into  the  next  world.     Yet  the  worship  of  the  dead  belongs 
rather  to  primitive  civilization  than  to  that  of  the  Achaeans. 

2  The  curse  operated  without  divine  interference;  but  it  was  itself 
a  sort  of  spirit,  as  a  potency  which  could  be  invoked.     It  belonged, 
however,  especially  to  the  powers  below,  though  in  the  care  of  Zeus. 

3  Sin  in  Homer  is  chiefly  a  violation  of  ethical  rules,  failure  to 
honor  parents  or  guests  or  suppliants  or  to  keep  an  oath ;  sin  against 
the  gods  comes  from  neglect  in  serving  them,  but  violation  of  ethics 
brings  divine  punishment. 


492  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

chief  crime  was  hybris,  insolent  over-stepping  of  one's  rights. 
In  Hesiod,  Justice  includes  regard  for  others'  rights  and 
morality  is  based  on  this  as  a  divine  power.  Justice  is  called 
the  daughter  of  Zeus.  So  to  be  law-abiding,  says  Hesiod,  is 
the  best  thing  to  pray  for.  Later,  the  gods  became  the  ideals 
born  of  advanced  civilization.  The  State  came  into  being 
out  of  a  union  of  clans  (the  beginning  of  this  is  already 
Homeric),  and  accordingly  the  gods  themselves  became 
more  universal,  though  clan-,  club-  and  family-gods  were 
retained.  Even  in  Homer's  time,  Zeus  and  others  had  be- 
come general  Greek  gods  and  various  clans  united  in  wor- 
ship at  one  temple,  which  drew  around  it  the  beginnings  of 
a  town.  Thus  the  city  was  felt  as  a  whole  religiously ;  its 
god  was  regarded  as  citizen  of  it,  sometimes  as  its  ances- 
tor. Each  religious  centre  had  its  own  individuality  as  had 
the  clan.  Later  State-worship,  with  its  temples,  proces- 
sions, statues,  etc.,  gave  a  united  religious  aspect  to  Greek 
political  life,  and  this  conception  of  a  religious  State  made 
easy  the  expansion  of  religion  into  a  broader,  universal 
religious  brotherhood. 

The  community-religion  of  the  Greek  made  it  possible  to 
allow  one  victim  to  represent  the  whole  community  in  a 
vicarious  sacrifice  and  it  gave  patriotism  a  religious  signifi- 
cance. Who  defended  his  land,  defended  his  gods;  con- 
versely, who  kept  out  foreign  gods,  was  a  patriot.  But  when 
the  Persian  war  made  Greece  conscious  of  itself  as  a  whole, 
Zeus  became  Hellenics,  a  moral  god  of  all  Greece  now  pro- 
claimed as  such.  The  Delphic  oracle,  too,  helped  to  make 
all  Greece  one  religious  community.  The  Homeric  divinity 
was  already  a  protector  of  the  suppliant  and  stranger  and 
the  god  of  friendship.  Mercy  and  justice  and  compassion 
were  his  traits,  as  humanity  and  art  were  dear  to  Athene, 
and  as  Apollo  inspired  music  and  patronized  philosophy. 
Thus  religion,  which  had  affected  Greek  life  from  the  be- 
ginning, grew  even  more  intimately  connected  with  it,  in- 
separable from  its  art  and  its  philosophy. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  old  cult  of  lower  gods  and  ghosts 


GREEK  RELIGION  493 

was  taken  over  by  the  State  but  was  modified  by  it.  Apo- 
tropaic  rites  (of  riddance)  were  made  part  of  a  higher  cult 
of  tendance  by  retaining  the  former  as  only  part  of  the  lat- 
ter. A  rite  of  fear  became  a  joyous  festival.  Yet  the 
chthonic  spirits  could  not  be  wholly  avoided.  The  savage 
view  persisted.  They  were  identified  more  or  less  with 
heroes  as  good  ghosts,  or  were,  as  evil  ghosts,  placated  with 
offerings  and  then  sent  away  by  the  use  of  pitch  and  buck- 
thorn or  a  good  beating  (as  in  Greenland,  etc.).  Sacrifice 
was  made  to  them  at  night  by  persons  dressed  in  black; 
while,  to  serve  the  Olympian  gods,  sacrifice  was  made  by 
day  by  worshippers  in  white. 

Sacrifices  to  the  upper  gods  were  based  on  the  notion  that 
they  would  gladly  share  in  the  meal  of  their  worshippers  and 
that  to  offer  good  things  to  them  would  coerce  them 
to  do  good  to  the  worshipper  in  turn.  This  is  the  pre- 
dominant mixed  note  in  the  Homeric  sacrifice.  Slaughter  of 
animals,  bull,  goat,  sheep,  or  swine,  was  for  the  purpose 
of  providing  such  a  common  meal.  But  the  victim  also 
imparted  to  the  worshippers  who  ate  of  it  communion  with 
the  god.  The  rites  differed  according  to  locality,  but  in 
general  the  victim  was  adorned  with  flowers  and  fillets  and 
its  horns  were  gilded.  An  altar-brand  was  plunged  by  way 
of  consecration  (communion)  into  a  basin  of  water  and  all 
were  baptized  with  this  holy-water.  Barley-groats  salted 
were  passed  around  and  strewn  on  the  victim  and  thrown 
into  the  fire,  where  also  was  thrown  hair  cut  from  the  vic- 
tim's brow  and  dedicated  to  the  god.  In  solemn  silence 
the  victim's  throat  was  cut;  in  the  case  of  an  ox  or  other 
large  victim  it  was  stunned  first.  The  blood  of  the  victim 
was  thrown  on  the  altar  and  part  of  the  flesh  was  burned 
for  the  god ;  libations  were  made  of  wine,  milk,  and  honey. 

The  sacrifice  to  the  lower  gods,  to  heroes,  and  to  the  dead 
was  made  by  pouring  the  blood  into  the  earth  (a  trench) 
and  the  entire  victim  was  burned  or  buried  or  got  rid  of  by 
casting  the  body  into  water.  Animals  unfit  for  food,  such 
as  dogs,  were  sometimes  slain  for  this  sacrifice;  in  any  case 


494  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  worshippers  did  not  partake  of  the  food  of  the  dead. 
For  ghosts,  beans  and  eggs  cast  on  the  ground  served  as 
sacrifice  and  pigs  cast  into  a  pit  fed  such  ghosts  materialized 
as  serpents.  As  the  backbone  of  a  man  was  thought  to  be- 
come a  serpent,  snakes  were  generally  regarded  as  new 
forms  of  defunct  men.  Offerings  of  fruit,  honey,  milk, 
especially  cakes  shaped  like  animals,  were  made  to  the  lower 
powers,  to  whom  usually  no  wine  was  offered,  as  this  was 
reserved  for  the  Olympians.  At  some  altars  only  bloodless 
sacrifice  was  made.  A  repugnance  against  all  bloody  sacri- 
fice manifested  itself  by  the  seventh  century  and  became  a 
trait  of  Pythagorean  and  Orphic  religion. 

Omens  were  taken  from  the  thighs  of  the  victim,  wrapped 
in  fat  and  consumed.  Oracles  were  supposed  to  be  divine 
utterances  at  certain  places,  the  best  known  being  that  of 
Zeus  at  Dodona 1  and  of  Apollo  at  Delphi  and  Delos. 
Some  heroes  also  had  oracular  shrines,  such  as  Trophonius 
at  Lebadeia  in  Boeotia ;  Amphiaraos  near  Thebes. 

Chief  of  the  earth-goddesses  was  Demeter,  whose  cult,  to- 
gether with  that  of  Dionysos,  both  strange  to  Homer,  in- 
troduced new  elements  into  Greek  religion.  The  Demeter 
cult,  perhaps  derived  from  the  Mediterranean  cult,  which 
exalts  a  Mother-goddess,  began  probably  with  sympathetic 
magic  (i>e  KVC),  but  became  a  sort  of  sacred  drama  in  which 
were  enacted  scenes  from  the  life  of  the  sorrowing  god- 
dess, who  mourned  her  lost  daughter  (the  vegetable  life 
of  the  world),  Kore  or  Persephone,  the  worshippers  sorrow- 
ing with  her  in  a  spectacle,  carried  out  in  darkness.  She 
descended  into  Hades  to  find  the  lost  Kore,  whose  re- 
vival in  spring  vegetation  typified  to  the  worshipper  a 
resurrection,  in  which  he  came  to  share,  as  the  idea  of 
union  with  the  divinity  was  imposed  upon  the  primitive  cult. 
This  later  idea,  however,  originated  in  the  Dionysiac  cult, 
which  under  Orphic  influence  became  spiritual  and  ethi- 
cal. Association  of  Bacchus  with  the  Eleusis  cult  was 

1  Here  Zeus  himself  gave  oracles  from  his  oaks  (compare  the 
Druids).  The  oak  itself  may  have  been  the  first  god. 


GREEK  RELIGION  495 

a  secondary  stage.  The  whole  cult  included,  besides, 
the  more  primitive  animism  of  the  natives,  which  had 
intrenched  itself  in  the  life  of  the  people  too  deeply  to 
be  given  up.  For  the  most  part  the  old  rites  of  riddance 
were  therefore,  as  has  been  said,  turned  into  decent  reli- 
gious rites  in  honour  of  respectable  gods.  Thus  in  its 
primitive  form  the  "  Diasia  of  Zeus  "  was  a  March  "  fes- 
tival "  of  cursing,  marked  by  killing  pigs  at  night  for  ghosts. 
It  is  doubtful,  however,  whether  the  Anthesteria  of  Dio- 
nysos  in  February-March  was  originally,  as  some  think,  a 
placation  of  ghosts  raised  by  prayer  (an  All  Souls'  Day). 
The  first  fruits  were  offered  to  spirits  in  May-June  at  the 
Thargelia,  supposed  to  be  a  festival  of  Apollo  but  really  a 
purification  by  means  of  a  human  scape-goat  called  the 
pharmakos.  There  was  a  rite  wholly  for  women  in  Oc- 
tober-November called  the  festival  of  the  Thesmophoria, 
in  which  pigs  were  cast  into  a  chasm  in  honour  of  Euboulos, 
who  had  vanished  underground  with  Demeter's  daughter. 
The  remains  of  the  pigs,  such  as  had  not  been  eaten  by  the 
snakes  (i.  e.  ghosts),  formed  a  sort  of  fertilizer,  being  placed 
on  fallow  ground  to  make  crops  grow  with  a  "  fair  birth." 
These  festivals  rid  house  and  town  of  the  spirits  after 
they  had  received  their  annual  tendance.  They  correspond 
to  the  Roman  placation  ceremonies  called  Feralia  and 
Lupercalia,  in  which,  as  a  fertility-charm,  women  were  hit 
with  the  skin  of  goats,  animals  sacrificed  to  spirits.  Evil 
spirits  impair  fertility  and  purification  is  to  be  pure  (free) 
of  spirits.  The  Achaeans  showed  no  regard  for  such  rites 
at  first,  yet  they  gradually  absorbed  them,  as  they  did  the 
local  gods.  The  two  cults,  of  kindly  Olympians  and  of 
frowsy  ghosts,  trees,  and  serpents,  both  revert  to  prehis- 
toric times.  Probably  the  reverence  paid  to  trees,  running 
water,  sky-stones,  and  similar  phenomena  was  an  element 
common  to  Achaean  and  Mediterranean  religion;  while 
reverence  paid  to  heroes  of  the  past  was  certainly  not  con- 
fined to  the  latter,  though  a  settled  people  holds  in  longer 
remembrance  the  local  monuments  of  their  dead.  Mediter- 


496  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ranean  burial,  as  opposed  to  Achaean  cremation,  was  also 
a  factor  of  importance.  It  is  perhaps  too  commonly  as- 
sumed that  burial  implies  greater  regard  for  life  beyond  the 
grave  than  does  cremation;  but  India  teaches  that  both 
methods  of  disposing  of  the  dead  may  be  practised  syn- 
chronously, withal  at  a  time  when  great  regard  was  paid  to 
the  life  hereafter.  Yet  the  material  presence  of  a  grave, 
in  the  shape  of  a  mound  over  a  body  known  to  be  buried 
there,  conserves  a  memory  for  centuries  and  tends  of  itself 
to  convert  a  dead  hero  into  a  living  divinity. 

Other  ghosts  regarded  as  spirits  have  been  exposed  by 
modern  scholars.1  Thus  the  Erinyes  have  been  shown  to  be 
at  first  avenging  spirits,  demanding  vengeance,  not  food. 
Bird-like  ghosts  are  Sirens  and  the  Keres.  Other  spirits 
are  doubtful.  Thus  the  Winds  are  sometimes  treated  as 
perturbed  ghosts,  for  whom  black  sacrificial  animals  were 
buried,  such  as  Harpies,  and  sometimes  as  heavenly  spirits, 
to  whom  white  sheep  were  sacrificed.  Stormy  winds  natu- 
rally appear  in  one  role;  kindly  breezes  in  another.  So  in 
India  (and  in  Zorastrianism)  "good"  and  "bad"  winds 
were  recognized.  Pigs  that  root  in  the  ground  naturally 
belong  to  ghosts,  who  fertilize  land  covered  with  the  flesh 
and  blood  of  swine.  Sacrifices  to  the  dead  and  to  under- 
ground spirits  are  found  among  savages  and  must  be  dis- 
tinguished from  fertility-rites  based  on  sympathetic  magic. 
These  latter  hold  up  to  nature  what  is  to  be  imitated,  at 
first  drastically,  then  more  symbolically,  realistic  action  yield- 
ing to  implication ;  lewd  behaviour  and  language  taking  the 
place  of  magical  performance. 

All  the  lower  spirits,  like  the  higher,  tend  to  become  less 
animal  in  form.  The  Erinyes  lose  their  wings  and  become 
one  with  the  goddesses,  ministers  of  justice,  called  the 

1  See  especially  Jane  Harrison,  Prolegomena  to  Greek  Religion, 
Cambridge,  1903.  Miss  Harrison's  later  (1913)  work,  Themis 
(from  magic  to  Olympus),  assumes  too  much  and  shows  less  judg- 
ment than  her  Prolegomena,  though  this  work  also  is  based  on  an 
implied  evolution  of  a  feministic  religion  into  a  cult  of  male  deities 
(a  decadence,  as  Miss  Harrison  regards  it). 


GREEK  RELIGION  497 

Semnai  and  Eumenides.  Artemis  appears  no  longer  with 
scales  like  a  fish,  Demeter  no  longer  with  a  mane  like  a 
horse.  The  forms  of  gods  honoured  by  the  Achaeans 
tended  to  make  ridiculous  the  animal-forms  revered  by  the 
natives.  Finally  the  concept  of  divinity  was  raised  to  a 
height  where  even  the  humanized  gods  of  the  Achaeans, 
still  more  humanized  by  the  statues  that  represented  them 
as  mere  men  and  women,  were  too  gross  for  philosophy. 
The  poets  mocked  anthropomorphism;  the  early  philoso- 
pher of  the  sixth  century  said,  "  There  is  One  God,  not 
like  men  in  mind  or  body;  all  of  him  sees,  thinks,  and 
hears."  1  This  is  the  "  Zeus  however  called,"  who  is  not  a 
man  but  the  spiritual  power  of  the  universe. 

Concerning  man,  we  hear,  at  first  in  Hesiod,  of  the  five 
ages  of  deterioration  through  which  he  has  passed  from  a 
former  diviner  state.  His  soul  becomes  a  shadow  after 
death  in  a  shadowy  world.  Man  neither  fears  nor  hopes 
much  beyond  the  grave.  Only  the  very  wicked  are  tor- 
mented hereafter ;  only  a  few  heroes  of  old  dwell  in  Elysium. 
But  even  this  is  a  grace  of  the  gods,  a  prediction  of  a  later 
salvation  by  grace.  There  is  as  yet  no  recognition  of  man's 
dual  nature,  earth-bound  but  fitted  for  divinity,  purified  by 
loosening  the  bonds  of  flesh  through  asceticism ;  no  idea  of 
sin  inherited  from  a  prenatal  state;  no  close  relation  be- 
tween the  moral  and  the  divine. 

Hesiod  reflects  not  only  Homer's  lore  but  the  mythology 
of  Crete  and  of  the  world,  so  to  speak.  His  "  birth  of 
Zeus  "  pictures  the  sword-dancers  of  Crete  and  his  contest 
of  gods  and  Titans  is  like  an  echo  of  the  conflict  with 
Tiamat.  But  such  contests  are  too  general  and  universal 
to  make  necessary  the  assumption  of  a  "loan."  The  old 
order  changeth  everywhere  and  the  Titans'  strife  is  merely 
a  poetic  version  of  the  change  from  savagery  to  civilization. 
The  perpetual  strife  is  then  between  the  gods  above  and  the 

1  This  (Orphic)  pantheism  becomes  a  belief  in  a  vague  Power 
like  the  primitive  potency  (without  individuality)  which  character- 
izes the  wcwa-belief.  But  the  wa«a-belief  is  not  a  belief  in  a  uni- 
versal, but  in  an  individual,  potency.  See  above,  p.  18. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

powers  below,  the  death  of  vegetation  and  of  all  life,  when 
dark  and  cold  oppose  light  and  heat.  This  drama,  too,  ap- 
peared in  Greece  and  as  an  actual  (acted)  drama  of  the 
country  was  introduced  into  Athens  when  the  country- 
population  began  to  drift  into  the  town. 

After  the  age  of  romance  and  chivalry  associated  with 
the  feudalistic  type  of  society  portrayed  by  Homer,  religion, 
as  revealed  by  literature,  is  a  reversion  to  the  homelier  side 
which  had  been  more  or  less  ignored.1  At  the  same  time 
questions  arose  as  to  the  nature  of  gods  and  their  relation 
with  right  and  justice.  So  we  get  cosmologies  and  a  crude 
ethical  religion  in  Hesiod,  but  these  beginnings  at  least 
paved  the  way  to  later  religion  by  introducing  a  spirit  of 
inquiry.  On  the  other  hand,  the  emotional  element  in  re- 
ligion, which  had  remained  hidden  among  the  rites  of  the 
wilder  northern  tribes  and  is  almost  ignored  by  Homer,  be- 
gins to  attain  more  prominence.  Thus  religion  develops 
along  two  quite  sundered  lines,  the  emotional  and  the  philo- 
sophical, till  the  former  by  becoming  spiritualized  blends  as 
mysticism  with  the  latter. 

The  first  movement  away  from  the  traditional  gods  of 
the  aristocratic  class  was  incidental  to  social  change,  esteem 
for  country  life  and  plebeian  gods  and  the  gradual  intro- 
duction of  country  rites  into  city  life.  Two  cults,  as  has 
been  said,  united  in  the  later  Eleusinian  mysteries,  that  of 
Demeter,  as  early  as  the  seventh  century,  whose  loss  and 
recovery  of  her  daughter  represented  the  death  and  revival 
of  vegetation,  an  early  tribal  mystery  afterwards  adopted 
by  all,  and  that  of  Dionysos,  the  life-giver,  whose  Thracian 
worshippers,  of  unknown  antiquity,  were  wild  drunken 
devotees  seeking  union  with  the  god  by  delirious  orgies  in 
which  they,  largely  women,  devoured  the  raw  flesh  of  vic- 
tims they  had  dismembered  and  identified  with  the  god, 

1  This  is  probably  not  wholly  due  to  literary  chance.  Doubtless 
the  homelier  religion  existed  before  it  was  exploited  by  Hesiod, 
but  also  economic  conditions  aided  then  for  the  first  time  the  cul- 
ture of  fields  and  of  the  deities  of  the  fields.  So  in  India  agricul- 
tural gods  are  late  because  agriculture  is  later  than  catttle-Uftirt^. 


GREEK  RELIGION  499 

whose  very  body  they  assimilated  and  to  whose  immortality 
they  thus  became  entitled.  By  the  sixth  century  a  deeper 
significance  of  this  cult,  by  way  of  Orphism,  was  evolved. 
This  substituted  an  emotion  of  the  spirit  for  the  excitement 
of  the  body ;  purity  of  soul  for  bodily  purification ;  mysticism 
for  sensuous  feeling.  This  religion  was  open  to  all,  even 
to  slaves,  and  consolidated  the  worshippers,  men  and 
women,  into  a  sort  of  church.  It  was  a  personal  religion; 
the  worshipper  was  intent  on  a  future  life  of  bliss  rather 
than  on  worldly  welfare  such  as  that  given  by  the  Olym- 
pians, a  life  attained  by  assimilation  to  the  divine  nature 
of  Zeus  as  the  universal  god  whose  son  is  Dionysos.  Those 
uninitiated  must  go  to  a  foul  hell,  till  purified  they  are 
born  again.  How  to  overcome  death  was  shown  at 
Eleusis ;  *  how  to  become  divine  was  shown  by  Orphism. 
This  popular  Orphic  religion,  which  was  not,  like  the 
Eleusinian  mysteries,  adopted  by  the  State,  soon  became 
rank  with  quackery  but  its  essence  was  pure  and  its  effect 
lasting. 

Greek  philosophy  was  incidentally  ethical  and  religious 
from  the  beginning.  The  poets  had  given  cosmologies  and 
divine  origins.  Thales,  c.  600  B.  c.,  derived  the  universe 
from  water  and  declared  that  God  was  the  "  intelligence  of 
the  world."  Anaximander  derived  the  world  from  the  In- 
finite. Pythagoras,  of  Doric  stock  and  spirit,  combined  a 
deepening  of  moral  consciousness  with  metaphysical  inquiry. 
He  founded  a  religious-philosophical  school,  perhaps  the 
first  of  those  religious  secret  societies  which  attacked  the 
naive  Achaean  Zeus-religion  from  within  the  Greek  world. 
Behind  matter  he  sought  that  which  gives  it  form  and  pro- 
portion and  found  this  in  number,  which  alone,  giving  di- 
mension, makes  a  harmonious  whole.  He  predicated  num- 
ber not  as  the  type  but  as  the  essence  of  things,  the  thing 

1  The  initiate  was  moved  by  the  spectacle  rather  than  instructed ; 
"blest  is  he  who  has  seen  these  rites."  The  rise  of  the  deity  from 
the  underworld  became  symbolic  of  life  which  arose  again  after 
burial.  The  original  rite  was  a  magical  cult  preserved  in  the  invo- 
cation "  rain,  conceive!  "  Two  jars  represented  heaven  and  earth. 


500  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

itself;  all  is  number;  the  soul  and  music  are  numbers. 
Later  was  ascribed  to  him  (probably  falsely)  the  ipse  dixit, 
"  Unity  is  Deity.J>  From  Orphic  circles  he  adopted  the  be- 
lief in  metempsychosis  and  invariable  rotation  of  activity, 
later  a  doctrine  of  the  Stoics.  He  first  spoke  of  the  body 
as  the  prison  of  the  soul;  he  advocated  moral  life,  purity, 
non-injury  to  animals ;  and  founded  a  religious  colony  at 
Crotona  in  Italy,  perhaps  in  the  seventh  century.  In  the 
sixth  to  fifth  century  Xenophanes,  a  follower  of  Anaximan- 
der,  railed  at  current  polytheism  and  opposed  it  with  the  doc- 
trine that  Being  alone  is  the  Ultimate ;  the  Deity  as  all-em- 
bracing Being  is  One.  Yet  Xenophanes  recognized  the 
reality  of  plurality  and  becoming.  In  this  system,  which 
predicates  the  unity  of  the  world,  the  immanent  cause  may 
be  called  God;  it  is  a  pantheism  rather  than  a  theism. 
Xenophanes  also  founded  a  school  in  Italy,  at  Elea,  whence 
he  and  his  two  successors  are  called  the  Eleatics.  Parmeni- 
des,  the  first  of  these,  reduced  the  One  and  Many  to  the 
Eternal  and  Becoming;  only  that  which  can  be  can  be 
thought;  there  is  no  non-being;  all  thought  is  of  Being. 
This  Being,  one  with  thought,  has  no  plurality  or  change; 
it  is  infused  with  creative  heat,  called  light  (symbolically 
represented  as  a  female  power  governing  all  and  mother  of 
Eros)  opposed  to  night.  The  third  Eleatic,  Zeno,  called 
the  "  inventor  of  dialectic  "  might  be  called  the  first  Sophist ; 
he  denied  plurality  and  change  (becoming).  Movement  is 
impossible ;  Achilles  can  never  catch  the  tortoise ;  the  arrow 
cannot  move,  etc. 

Opposed  to  a  school  which  had  thus  argued  itself  into 
such  a  denial  of  change  or  becoming,  Heraclitus  (c.  460) 
denied  Absolute  Being.  All  is  Becoming,  all  flows;  or,  as 
Buddha  also  said,  all  is  burning.  Original  energy,  expressed 
by  constant  change,  is  both  Being  and  Becoming.  Empe- 
docles  of  Sicily  (440)  made  love  and  hate  two  forces 
operative  in  eternal  matter,  which,  as  he  was  first  to  state, 
is  composed  of  four  elements.  In  the  same  century  De- 
mocritus  assumed  atoms  acting  from  necessity  as  sufficient 


GREEK  RELIGION  S^1 

to  explain  the  universe,  which  he  regarded  as  godless  (he 
degraded  gods  to  air-demons).  The  atomic  theory  he  took 
from  Leucippus  and  the  idea  of  necessity  from  Pythagoras ; 
he  himself  indulged  in  no  cult  of  demons  (as  did  Pytha- 
goras), but  held  to  a  world  evolved  without  divine  agency. 
Anaxagoras,  who  may  be  said  to  have  planted  philosophy 
at  Athens,  where  he  was  a  friend  of  Pericles  and  Euripides, 
first  set  beside  matter  a  divine  Intelligence,  Nous,  as  primal 
causality,  though  he  left  this  Nous  inactive  thereafter,  as 
the  philosophic  Hindus  leave  Brahman,  who  having  created 
has  done  his  part  and  rests.  It  remained  for  the  Sophists 
to  recognize  mind  as  something  permanently  higher  than 
matter,  though  the  Sophists  were  not  of  one  school,  some 
remaining  agnostic,  some  denying  an  intelligent  governing 
principle. 

But,  as  regards  the  people  at  large,  apart  from  philosophy, 
there  were,  on  the  one  hand,  the  vulgar,  for  whom  Solon's 
religion  doubtless  sufficed,  "  Honour  the  gods  and  respect 
your  parents  " ;  and,  on  the  other,  those  neither  vulgar  nor 
metaphysical  speculators.  To  them,  the  cultivated  honest 
men,  there  were  two  moral  laws,  one  given  by  legal  enact- 
ment or  ancient  custom  and  the  other  the  unwritten  law  of 
nature,  which  together  taught  ritual  purity,  formal  service, 
and  ethical  behaviour.  In  choosing  between  the  two,  the 
conservative  chose  ancient  law ;  the  liberal,  natural  law,  as 
their  guide.  But  the  older  credulity  was  gone.  To  the 
lyric  poets,  Zeus  was  vague ;  to  Thucydides,  oracles  were  of 
doubtful  value.  The  chief  bond  between  gods  and  men 
ethically  was  the  maintenance  of  sobriety,  especially  in  avoid- 
ing insolent  assumption  of  power  and  wealth  when  acquisi- 
tion involved  unethical  behaviour.  Even  the  idea  that  the 
gods  humbled  the  fortunate  because  they  were  too  happy 
(quite  apart  from  ethics)  lingers  on  in  Herodotus.  Above 
all  there  is  a  doubt  as  to  the  governing  power  in  the  world ; 
it  may  be,  as  Euripides  says,  the  evil  Necessity  of  the  phi- 
losophers; it  may  be  human  intelligence,  perhaps  as  part 
of  the  universal  Nous.  No  one  knows.  There  is  no  infal- 


502  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

lible  authority;  no  revelation;  no  inspired  Word.  None  of 
the  poets  or  would-be  philosophers  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  cen- 
turies has  any  fixed  ethical  base  of  action.  Most  of  them 
question  old  beliefs;  some  doubt  the  existence  of  divinity. 
Pericles  in  his  great  speech  has  not  a  word  to  say  in  the 
way  of  religious  consolation. 

Meantime  the  various  Mysteries  were  influencing  popu- 
lar opinion.  A  sentimental  religion,  deriving  from  a  sen- 
suous mysticism,  inspired  hope  of  future  life  for  the  initi- 
ates, who  as  such,  irrespective  of  their  morality,  were  en- 
titled to  happiness  in  this  world  and  bliss  in  the  next,  while 
those  not  initiate  would  fail  of  happiness  here  and  sink  in 
slime  hereafter.  Out  of  the  religious  mystery  arose  the 
drama  which  gave  a  new  power  to  religious  (and  irreligious) 
truths  uttered  before  a  popular  assembly.  Symbolic  inter- 
pretation of  old  tales  also  affected  religion.  The  divine  in 
man  was  revealed  in  the  tale  of  the  Titans.  They  devoured 
Dionysos  and  were  in  turn  destroyed  by  Zeus,  but  they  had 
absorbed  divinity  and  their  ashes  kept  it  still.1  The  old 
Homeric  idea  of  hell  (Hades)  as  a  place  of  torment  for 
sinners  was  now  quite  generally  united  with  that  of  trans- 
migration, as  in  India.  Zeus,  to  the  thinker,  became  the 
supreme  lord  of  the  world,  from  whom  in  accordance  with 
justice  come  good  and  evil.2  The  rule  of  the  gods  became 

1  Cretan,  perhaps  Egyptian,  influence  may  have  been  at  work  in 
the  Dionysos-Demeter    (later  "  Year  Demon ")    cult.     Elysium  has 
been  compared  with  the  Egyptian  Aalu,  whither  he  goes  who  being 
pure   has   escaped   condemnation    at   the   hands   of    Ra   of   Amenti 
(which    becomes    Rhadamanth-us).     Miss    Harrison,    who   believes 
in  this  etymology  as  an  indication  of  Egyptian  origin,  also   (Pro/. 
421)  derives  tragedy  from  tragos,  "spelt,"  spelt  wrong  for  trugodia 
"wine-lees."    The    etymology    is    false,    but    Dionysos's    connexion 
with  tragedy  is  assured.     Professor  Ridgeway  has  lately  sought  to 
show  that  all  tragedy  arises   from  ghost-cult.     But  tragedy    (and 
play-acting    in    general)    has    more    than    one    root.    The    "Year- 
demon,"  or  better  the  season-strife,  is  clearly  dramatized  in  primi- 
tive cults  without  reference  to  ghosts. 

2  An    evil   principle   is   not   recognized   by   early   Greek  thought. 
Later    philosophers    and    Orphics,    however,    referred    evil    to    evil 
demons.    The   earlier  ghosts   were  not   evil  by  nature,   though   if 
neglected  they  might  do  evil  to  man.    Still,  demoniac  powers  were 


GREEK  RELIGION  5°3 

the  world-order.  The  poets  recognize  the  old  gods  but 
accept  the  new  ideas.  Pindar  erects  shrines  to  Pan  and 
Cybele,  statues  to  Zeus,  Apollo,  and  Hermes;  but  to  him 
the  gods  are  moral  powers  and  he  believes  of  them  only 
the  tales  which  exhibit  them  as  all-seeing  spirits  who  honour 
truth  and  right;  de  dels  nil  nisi  bonum.  He  also  teaches 
that  a  human  soul  may  free  itself  from  bodily  bonds  and 
find  rebirth.  Sophocles  teaches  that  a  man  must  follow  the 
lead  of  the  gods  as  beings  superior  to  him  in  judgment  of 
right.  Undeserved  misfortune  by  Aeschylus,  who  believes 
that  the  universe  is  moral,  is  explained  on  the  principle 
of  wisdom  through  suffering.  To  him  all  gods  are  names 
of  one  All-Being.  Euripides  (480-406  B.C.)  taught  that 
gods  exist  only  if  gods  are  good;  divinity  exhibits  itself  as 
reason  and  justice,  whether  one  call  it  aether  or  intelligence; 
also  he  adopts  the  mystic  standpoint  enough  to  imply  that 
inspiration  more  than  knowledge  brings  wisdom.  The  in- 
tellectual life  of  Athens  in  the  fifth  century  agrees  with  the 
popular  religion  and  with  the  philosophers  in  postulating  a 
higher  divinity  than  that  of  old  and  in  making  man  a  di- 
vinely affected  spirit.  Socrates  definitely  expressed  reli- 
gion in  terms  of  ethics,  which  finally  led  Plato  (428-347) 
to  the  thesis  that,  as  God  is  good,  so  the  Good  is  God,  and 
that  man's  nature  is  divine;  since  the  human  soul  partakes 
of  divinity  in  that  it  is  eternal  and  immortal,  like  the  Idea  * 
which  it  can  apprehend.  For  a  time  the  belief  in  the  old 
gods  reasserted  itself  in  condemning  those  publicly  accused 

a  popular  belief,  Ephialtes,  the  demon  of  indigestion,  bogeys  like 
Lamia  and  Mormo  (to  frighten  children),  etc.,  and  "man-demons," 
who  may  have  been  ghostly  spirits,  as  avengers,  alkestores.  To  the 
philosophers  these  were  still  more  or  less  real,  though  Heraclitus 
says  that  a  man's  character  is  his  daemon.  The  wicked  demons  of 
Empedocles  who  suffer  metempsychosis  for  30,000  years  are,  how- 
ever, human  souls. 

1  The  Idea  unites  the  notimenal  and  phenomenal.  God  is  here 
transcendent;  the  world  is  shaped  by  demiurges  according  to  the 
Ideas;  they  make  the  gods  and  the  gods  make  the  rest  of  creation. 
The  world  itself  is  avrofaov,  and  evil  by  Necessity.  Plato  is  the  first 
to  argue  that  the  soul  is  an  immortal  substance;  the  prison-house 
notion  he  took  from  Pythagoras. 


504  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

of  impiety.  Socrates  was  slain  as  an  unorthodox  wor- 
shipper as  well  as  a  corruptor  of  morals ;  Anaxagoras  before 
him  had  to  flee  for  his  life.  It  is  a  mistake  to  assume  that 
Athens  was  wholly  liberal-minded ;  but  the  populace  con- 
founded Socrates  with  the  Sophists,  who  had  indeed  upset 
with  casuistry  all  the  grounds  of  ethics  and  religion,  while 
Anaxagoras's  blunt  statement  that  the  popular  gods  were 
base  or  were  mere  matter  (the  sun  is  a  stone),  was  to  the 
mind  of  the  pious  mere  blasphemy. 

In  Orphism,  the  soul  may  eventually  become  divine;  in 
Plato's  system,  it  is  already  divine,  needing  only  to  escape 
its  prison.  This  it  does  not  emotionally  but  rationally.  Al- 
though Plato  condemned  the  quackery  which  arose  in  the 
train  of  Orphism,  he  borrowed  much  from  it.  Orphic  ideas 
fairly  metamorphosed  the  old  Zeus-religion  from  six  to 
three  hundred  B.  c.  All  divinities  were  here  looked  upon  as 
nourishing  and  saving  forms  of  one  potency :  "  Zeus  is 
one,  male  and  female,  the  breath  (soul)  of  all.  Sun,  moon, 
stars,  and  sky  are  all  Zeus."  Each  man  is  supposed  to  have 
a  guardian  spirit  that  accompanies  him  (fourth  century). 
The  world  is  imagined  as  coming  from  a  cosmic  egg  (as  in 
India).  Eros  and  Dionysos  were  now  held  to  be  cosmic 
principles;  divine  L?ve  replaced  passion;  the  principle  of 
life  and  spiritual  ecstasy  took  the  place  of  Bacchantic  mad- 
ness. Old  rules  received  new  interpretation.  Formerly 
beans  were  avoided  as  food  of  the  ghosts;  now  one  must 
avoid  be-ans  as  a  form  of  be-ing.1 

It  must  not  be  thought,  however,  that  the  old  country 
religion  was  suddenly  given  up.  On  the  contrary,  as  late 
as  the  fifth  century  Pan  was  brought  from  Arcady  and  es- 
tablished at  Athens,  as  Asklepios  was  brought  thither  from 
Epidauros.  But,  from  Plato's  time  on,  Orphic  thought  satu- 
rated philosophical  religion,  as  it  had  greatly  influenced 

1  Such  sacred  puns  were  no  joke  to  the  ancients ;  the  name  had 
a  religious  significance.  Compare  (Professor  Lamman's  version) 
the  Hindu  rule  against  eating  meat:  "Me  eat  will  he,  mam  sa, 
whose  meat,  mamsa,  I  eat."  The  Greek  rule,  Kvapovs  5ia  T$IV 
is  rendered  as  above  by  Miss  Harrison. 


GREEK  RELIGION  5°5 

people  and  philosophers  for  two  centuries  before  him.  The 
best  man  is  now  the  one  "  nearest  to  God."  Incarnated 
again  and  again,  a  man  frees  himself  from  grossness  tfll 
(by  a  combination  of  purgatory  and  metempsychosis)  he 
becomes  his  true  self,  divine.  Soul  and  body  make  a  dual 
nature,  the  latter  hindering  and  imprisoning  the  former. 
Means  of  release  in  this  life  are,  besides  knowledge  (Plato's 
emphatic  modification),  abstinence  from  meat,  eggs,  beans,1 
etc.,  and  a  discipline  more  or  less  magical.  Empedocles  re- 
counted his  "  former  births."  Pindar,  Euripides,  and  Plato 
were  Orphic  adepts.  Plato  in  fact  lived  for  some  time  at 
Croton  in  Italy,  where  Pythagoras  was  cultivated  as  a  di- 
vine founder  of  a  school,  one  of  the  numerous  brotherhoods 
which  took  an  important  part  in  disrupting  Greek  religion. 
They  were  partly  philosophical  and  partly  religious  congre- 
gations devoted  to  the  service  of  special  gods,  generally  for- 
eign gods  like  Sebazios,  and  having  their  own  rules  and 
sacraments. 

The  importance  of  Aristotle  (384-322  B.C.)  as  a  reli- 
gious teacher  was  not  felt  till  the  Middle  Ages.  In  oppo- 
sition to  Plato  he  taught  that  Ideas  were  not  realities,  but 
that  there  was  a  real  and  intelligent  Cause,  setting  the  world 
in  order  with  a  view  to  its  predestined  end,  this  cause  being 
God  in  Nature.  God  does  nothing  without  purpose ;  order 
and  purpose  testify  to  Mind  or  God,  who  in  the  last  analy- 
sis must  be  identical  with  Nature,  as  ultimate  matter  is  one 
with  what  Aristotle  calls  the  Form  as  God.  But  the  philos- 
opher is  not  wholly  consistent  with  himself,  since  he  also 
holds  that  God  (First  Cause  and  Pure  Thought)  is  not 
mixed  with  matter  but  immaterial,  like  Plato's  Idea,  tran- 
scendent, not  immanent  in  matter,  so  that  his  system  is  logi- 
cally dualistic.  The  Nous  or  soul  in  this  system  is  divine 
(eternal  and  immortal)  2  as  it  is  the  creative,  reasoning  part 
of  man.  Thus  the  way  is  prepared  for  Stoicism  and  its 

1  That  is  food  fit  for  ghosts  and  demons. 

-  So  Janet  and  Seailles,  A  History  of  the  Problems  of  Philosophy, 
London,  1902,  vol.  ii.  pp.  355  f.,  as  opposed  to  Zeller,  who  denies  that 
the  human  vovs  of  Aristotle  is  immortal. 


506  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

teaching  that  man  has  a  moral  nature.  The  Stoics  1  taught 
that  the  soul  shares  the  appetites  of  the  animal  and  the  reason 
of  divinity.  The  aim  of  life  is  to  develop  this  moral  nature ; 
virtue  is  man's  highest  pursuit  and  virtue  is  intelligence, 
discretion,  courage,  and  justice,  which  they  summed  up  as 
knowledge,  thus  identified  with  virtue,  as  Socrates  identified 
the  two.  Man's  will  must  be  brought  into  accord  with 
nature ;  he  must  be  dominated  by  reason,  which  is  the  active 
principle  in  the  material  universe.  This  reason,  theoreti- 
cally material,  is  actually  regarded  as  God  (World-Reason), 
immanent  in  matter,  not  transcending  matter  though  it  may 
be  called  Zeus,  "  from  whom  men  derive,  the  author  of  all 
nature,  guiding  all  with  law."  To  the  Stoic,  evil  is  com- 
plementary to  good,  as  is  dark  to  light;  the  soul,  if  wise 
(thus  Chrysippus),  survives  death  till  the  end  of  the  age, 
when  the  world  through  a  conflagration  comes  to  a  practical 
stop  (it  actually  continues  through  new  cycles  of  involved 
existences).  One  of  the  most  significant  doctrines  of  Stoi- 
cism is  that  of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  all  men  possessing 
part  of  the  universal  Reason.  That  all  men  being  divine 
are  born  equal  and  that  all  gods  except  God  as  Reason  are 
allegories,  may  be  said  to  sum  up  the  view  of  the  Stoics. 
Naturally,  Stoicism  became  chiefly  a  moral  philosophy, 
since  it  had  discarded  personal  gods.  Its  doctrines,  when 
received  at  Rome,  had  a  great  influence  on  the  religion  of 
the  future. 

Reviewing  the  course  of  Greek  religion  thus  far,  we  find 
that  the  idea  of  divinity,  already  enlarged  by  political  acci- 
dent, as  clans  rose  to  State,  was  elevated  by  Orphism,  which 
interpreted  the  divine  not  only  mystically  but  morally.  The 
moral  element  was  an  addition  to  the  older  (ritualistic) 
purity  of  the  mysteries,  but  it  was  present  in  the  Zeus-relig- 
ion. Resurrection,  also  was  not  new.  All  Greece  had  local 

aThe  chief  Stoics  were  Zeno  (340  B.C.)  of  Cyprus,  Cleanthes,  and 
Chrysippus.  They  assumed  two  active  and  two  passive  (receptive) 
elements,  fire  and  air  versus  earth  and  water;  but  their  fire  is  a 
reasoning  energy,  the  seed  of  being  and  thought  and  the  ethical 
principle  ("Zeus"). 


GREEK  RELIGION  507 

heroes,  who  lived  after  death ;  ghosts,  too,  returned  to  earth 
to  injure  or  benefit  man;  and  vegetable-resurrection  was 
celebrated  as  a  divine  return  to  life  of  a  spirit-power.1  To 
these  ideas  of  revival  the  Orphics  added  that  of  the  human 
soul  destined  to  suffer  and  be  rewarded  hereafter,  which 
infused  into  Greek  religion  the  belief  in  the  torments  of 
hell  for  every  sinner,  as  every  pure  soul  might  be  blessed 
in  the  next  life.  Homer's  pessimism  as  to  the  next  life 
becomes  optimism ;  but  on  the  other  hand  his  optimism  or 
joy  in  this  life  becomes  pessimistic ;  the  material  world  is 
now  essentially  evil  (so  even  Plato  argues).2  The  germ 
of  moral  disease  is  to  be  seen  here.  Spirituality  carried 
to  the  point  of  seeking  riddance  from  the  body  is  not 
sound.  No  healthy  animal  desires  to  die.  So  long  as 
Orphism  remained  a  cult  of  philosophy  and  of  a  few  mystics 
it  was  not  dangerous.  In  the  sixth  and  later  centuries  the 
great  gain  for  religion  was  its  humanitarian  aspect.  Re- 
ligion is  open  to  all  and  man's  nature  is  recognized  as  the 
same  everywhere.  "  No  good  man  is  alien  to  me,"  says 
Menander  (fourth  century  B.  c.).  God  is  a  spirit  discerned 
by  mind :  "  The  light  of  the  mind  is  to  gaze  upon  God/' 
But  as  Athens  declined  in  power  her  intelligence  weakened. 
Finding  that  the  old  gods  could  not  help  her,  her  thinkers 
turned  to  magical  mysticism  and  to  the  cult  of  foreign 
gods;  though  probably  the  mass  remained  as  true  to  the 
old  gods,  nymphs,  spirits,  and  ghosts  as  masses  always  do. 
But  Tyche,  Fortune,  an  uncertain  substitute  for  Zeus,  be- 
came the  refuge  of  the  Greeks  by  the  third  century  B.  c. 
The  cult  of  Fortune  was  indeed  taken  so  seriously  that 

1  Some  modern  scholars  speak  of  this  Year  Daimon,  as  if  he  were 
the  chief  god  of  Greece !     But  this  Daimon  is  only  a  late  anthropo- 
morphic form  of  the  spirit  of  vegetation  (Demeter-Dionysos).    To 
the  Hindus,  the  Year  Divinity  was  one  with  the  Father  of  Life  but 
also  one  with  Death. 

2  Plato  denied  the  real  existence  of  matter  (only  the  Idea  exists), 
but  ascribed  sin  to  the  soul's  admixture  with  matter.     Aristotle  ob- 
jected to  Plato's  Ideas  as  being  meaningless  metaphors,  abstractions 
without  individual  existence.     The  essence  cannot  be  separated  from 
that  of  which  it  is  the  essence.     Both  the  tortures  of  hell  and  the 
view  that  earthly  life  is  evil  were  passed  on  to  the  Christian  world. 


508  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Tyche  was  made  one  with  the  Logos  or  Nous.  Epicurus 
(341  B.  c.),  who  was  born  six  years  after  Plato  died,  scorn- 
fully said  that  he  would  rather  be*  the  slave  of  the  old  gods 
than  of  such  a  deity.1  Chrysippus,  the  Stoic,  who  died  about 
208,  says  that  in  his  day  men  worshipped  Sun,  Moon,  Stars, 
Law,  and  deified  human  beings.  This  is  a  peculiarly  inter- 
esting statement  in  showing  that  the  Olympian  gods,  who  did 
not  include  sun,  moon,  and  stars,  were  quite  dead  and  that 
people  had  reverted  to  a  more  primitive  ghost-  and  nature- 
cult  with  an  ethical  tinge.  But  those  who  now  called  them- 
selves philosophers  turned  to  Oriental  occultism.  They 
worshipped  the  elements ;  substituted  the  Maid  of  the  Mind, 
Sophia,  for  the  Maiden  Kore;  adored  the  seven  planets,  as 
spheres  full  of  spirits ;  admired  the  harmony,  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  and  mystically  identified  the  spiritual  planets  with 
elements,  stoicheia,  which  in  turn  designated  vowels,  also 
seven,  so  that  these  became  signs  of  the  planets  used  in 
magical  formulas.  The  months  were  divided  into  weeks, 
a  day  for  each  planet,  Sun,  Moon,  Ares,2  Hermes,  Zeus, 
Aphrodite,  Kronos.  This  is  adulterated  Greek.  Astrology 
with  its  pretence  of  prophecy  became  rampant  as  early  as 
the  time  of  Alexander,  when  Berosus  exploited  the  "  Chal- 
dean "  thirty  gods  of  counsel  beneath  seven  planet-gods, 
angel-stars,  the  Twelve  Masters  (Zodiacal  signs),  and  all 
the  rest,  later  Babylonian  wisdom  brought  to  Cos  and  thence 
spread  over  Greece.  Professor  Gilbert  Murray  calls  this 
era  the  Stage  of  Failure  of  Nerve,3  as  distinguished  from 
those  of  Primitive  Foolishness,  Classical  Olympians,  and  a 
final  Stage  of  post-Christian  religion.  At  any  rate  it  was 
a  stage  which  marked  the  decay  of  the  old  belief  that  Zeus 
was  in  his  heaven  and  all  was  right  with  the  world,  though 
it  takes  perhaps  as  much  nerve  to  renounce  happiness  as  to 
expect  it.  But  all  this  later  rubbish,  of  the  angel-stars,  etc., 

1  Gad,  the  Palestinian  god,  is  personified  Fortune.     In  India,  Time 
as  Fate,  also  became  a  god  of  fortune,  but  he  was  identified  with 
Brahma. 

2  Still  preserved  in  Mardi,  Mercredi,  etc. 

sFour  Stages  of  Greek  Religion,  New  York,  1912. 


GREEK  RELIGION  5°9 

is  only  part  of  a  logical  reversal.  The  name  philosopher 
deceives.  Magic-mongers  and  astrologers  made  a  great 
noise  at  this  time,  but  religion  was  really  advancing  despite 
this  foreign  magic-philosophy,  which  masqueraded  as  reli- 
gion. For  though  condemned  by  Epicurus,  who  was  a  ra- 
tionalistic naturalist  (practically  atheistic),1  the  Stoics 
adopted  the  new  religious  thought  and  went  their  way  with 
it  to  create  a  very  noble  religion.  The  Orphic  mysticism 
revels  in  thoughts  of  harmony  and  its  "  I  am  become  God  " 
and  "  I  am  your  fellow  star  "  reflects  a  real  belief,  yet  one 
not  so  influential  among  the  people  nor  tending  to  advan- 
tage them  so  much  as  does  the  Stoic  aphorism,  "  God  is  the 
helping  of  man  by  man  and  this  is  the  path  to  eternal 
glory."  Even  the  Epicurean  negation,  "  God  is  naught  to 
fear ;  death  is  naught  to  feel,"  2  is  not  indicative  of  a  failure 
of  moral  fibre.  But,  in  any  event,  philosophy  has  little  to  do 
with  the  religion  of  the  masses. 

Greece  was  now  over-run  with  foreign  deities,  Isis,  long 
worshipped  at  Delos ;  Cybele,  Bendis,  Adonis,  Sabazios,  all 
over  the  country.  In  271  B.  c.,  Ptolemy  Philadelphos  and 
his  wife  were  formally  deified,  as  Alexander  had  previously 
deified  himself.  This  deification  of  man  differs  from  the 
unconscious  lapse  of  regard  into  worship  which  charac- 
terizes the  cult  of  heroes  and  it  was  not  acceptable  in  all 
cases.  Aristotle  was  exiled  because  he  deified  a  man.  On 
the  other  hand  the  line  between  human  and  divine  was  not 
so  broad  as  we  draw  it.  Homer's  heroes  are  "  god-born  " 
and  Plato  was  spoken  of  as  "  divine."  But  in  the  case  of 
new  deities,  Greece  was  always  catholic,  or  she  would  not 
have  received  the  Cyprian  goddess  so  easily,  or  so  easily 
have  recognized  divinity  abroad.  Alexander  worshipped 
Isis  and  the  Jews'  god  from  policy,  but  also  because  every 
place  had  its  god  and  Greece  recognized  the  fact.  Hence, 
when  Greece  became  a  greater  name,  a  Greek  would  worship 
as  Greek  the  gods  of  the  place  where  he  was.  Conversely, 

1  He  taught  that  the  gods  lived  without  relation  to  man,  who  has 
no  immortal  soul. 

2  Murray,  op.  cit.,  p.  152. 


510  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

he  could  bring  into  Greece  any  god  and  worship  him  or  her, 
when  once  he  had  realized  that  a  god  is  not  like  a  ghost,  a 
spirit  of  one  locality.  Love  is  ever  the  same ;  hence  Aphro- 
dite rules  everywhere;  the  spirit  of  life  is  ever  the  same, 
hence  Cybele  can  be  worshipped  in  Hellas  as  well  as  in  Asia 
Minor.  We  must  add  the  spread  of  the  idea  that  all  gods 
are  forms  of  One  and  we  have  the  explanation  of  the  reli- 
gious syncretism  of  the  time,  which  was  marked  also  by  so 
many  foreign  figures. 

There  passed  forth  from  this  period  into  the  coming 
greater  religion  of  the  world  many  streams  of  thought  and 
cultural  practices.  The  idea  of  a  world-religion,  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  the  missionary  spirit  (in  Orphisrn), 
these  were  all  pre-Christian.  Bloody  sacrifice  had  been  con- 
demned by  the  Pythagoreans  and  by  Heraclitus.  The  ac- 
ceptable sacrifice  was  already  a  pure  heart.  The  thought 
that  man  was  of  God  and  that  God  was  one,  was  current  be- 
fore Christian  theology  began.  The  Church  incidentally 
converted  some  old  gods  into  harmless  saints.  The  adora- 
tion of  images  replaced  the  use  of  idols  in  the  Greek 
world, —  an  image  of  Demeter  was  in  fact  worshipped  as 
a  saint  as  late  as  1801 !  —  as  did  the  use  of  incense  in  the 
Church  that  of  incense  at  the  altar  of  the  temple.1  St.  Paul 
based  his  arguments  as  to  evil  communications  on  the  words 
of  a  Greek  comedian,  as  he  cited  a  Greek  philosopher  to 
show  that  men  are  children  of  God,  and  his  knowledge  of 
the  Greek  mysteries  lent  a  mystic  tinge  to  his  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Christian  mystery. 

After  Greek  philosophy  became  united,  at  Alexandria, 
with  Jewish  thought,  there  arose  a  new  mysticism  charac- 
terized by  a  belief  in  a  God  of  whom  nothing  save  his  pure 
existence  can  be  predicated.  He  creates  only  through  sec- 
ondary powers,  chief  of  whom  is  the  reason  or  wisdom 
called  Logos.  It  is  not  possible  here  to  discuss  this  combi- 

1  Homer's  use  of  sweet  savours  and  scented  wood  led  to  the 
use  of  incense  (in  the  seventh  century)  ;  but  this  incense-idea  came 
from  the  East. 


GREEK  RELIGION  511 

nation  of  Platonic  and  Jewish  belief  further  than  to  point 
out  that  according  to  it,  as  taught  by  Philo,  in  the  first  cen- 
tury A.  D.,  knowledge  and  virtue  are  gifts  of  God,  and  conse- 
quently salvation  is  an  act  of  grace,  an  idea  which  also 
amalgamated  with  Christian  doctrine.  The  Logos  doctrine 
is  an  attempt  to  bridge  the  chasm  between  Absolute  Being 
and  the  world  of  phenomena.  Later  Neo-Platonism  also 
tries  or  tends  to  make  dualism  monistic,1  but  it  bridges  the 
chasm  by  means  of  two  intermediaries  and  yields  itself  to 
ecstasy  and  theurgy  rather  than  to  logic.  Based  on  Plato 
and  the  Stoics  and,  as  its  name  implies,  considering  itself 
the  interpreter  of  Plato's  thought,  it  is  in  fact  a  philosophy 
of  feeling  rather  than  of  thinking. 

At  first  Neo-Platonism  was  a  revolt  against  the  Sceptics, 
who  had  contended,  against  the  Stoics  and  Epicureans,  that 
knowledge  was  impossible.  Opposed  to  such  a  negation. 
Plotinus,  the  pupil  of  Ammonius  Saccas,  who  also  taught 
Origen  and  Longinus,  and  other  Neo-Platonists  felt  a  long- 
ing for  absolute  truth,  which  they  satisfied  by  mystical  exal- 
tation, an  immediate  beholding  or  intuition,  only  to  be  at- 
tained when  there  is  no  distinction  between  the  knower  and 
the  known.  The  soul  must  feel  itself  illumined  by  the 
Absolute  in  pure  rapture ;  objective  knowledge  and  dialectics 
are  of  no  use.  Not  reason,  which  distinguishes  thought, 
thinker,  and  object,  but  something  higher  than  reason  must 
be  the  Absolute,  which  stands  above  being  as  well  as  above 
reason  and  has  neither  thought  nor  will;  but  it  is  unthink- 
able, undefinable.  Out  of  it  emanates  the  world-intelligence, 
out  of  which  again  emanates  the  world-soul  (a  Pythagorean 
conception),  which,  permeated  by  reason  as  world-intelli- 
gence, actualizes  it  in  an  outer  world.  Except  for  the 
series  of  emanations,  this  system  is  at  one  with  that  of  the 

1  It  may  be  said  that  it  tries  rather  to  make  its  inherent  monism 
dualistic.  The  world  as  emanation  presupposes  monism  and  Neo- 
Platonism  was  really  monistic ;  its  unconscious  aim  was  to  unite  all 
in  one  being.  But  it  had  inherited  a  dualism  it  could  not  get  rid 
of,  physical  and  moral;  its  conscious  objective  was  to  get  rid  of  one 
half  and  keep  the  other. 


512  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

earlier  Upanishads  of  India  (c.  600  B.C.),  before  the  doc- 
trine of  illusion  was  introduced  into  it.  The  teaching, 
though  opposed  to  Christianity,  had  a  marked  effect  on  it. 
Plotinus  taught  at  Rome  in  the  middle  of  the  third  century 
A.  D.,  where  later  his  work  may  have  converted  Augustine 
from  Manichaeism.  He  believed  in  asceticism,  for  one 
becomes  diviner  through  becoming  less  human;  by  losing 
man  one  becomes  God.  But  Plotinus  also  upheld  poly- 
theism, the  gods  being  spirits  between  God  and  man,  and  he 
maintained  rites,  making  a  dangerous  alliance  between  his 
theology  and  'magic,  in  that  he  held  to  a  secret  power  in 
the  soul  and  in  nature,  whence  also  he  derived  support  for 
mantic  inspiration.  Here,  too,  we  have  contrasted  good  and 
evil  spirits.1  He  was  followed  by  Porphyry,  a  vegetarian 
and  Puritan  polemical  writer  adverse  to  Christianity,2  as 
Porphyry  in  turn  was  succeeded  by  lamblichus,  whose  reli- 
gion was  a  curious  mixture  of  godliness  and  magic.  In  this 
reversion  to  magic,  Greek  religion  went  back  in  its  old  age 
to  the  childhood-stage;  though  one  must  remember  that 
native  belief  had  been  infused  for  centuries  with  foreign 
thought  and  most  of  the  later  magic  is  an  importation  from 
the  Orient. 

The  living  religion  of  Zeus  as  anthropomorphic  god 
faded  away  in  Greece  under  the  light  of  philosophy  and  the 
concurrence  of  foreign  cults.  But  probably  its  disappear- 
ance was  influenced  even  more  by  lowly  native  thought  than 
by  higher  or  foreign  beliefs.  Thus  the  hope  of  a  future 
happiness  for  the  masses,  the  divine  nature  of  man,  the 
immanence  of  the  divine,  were  all  outgrowths  of  Grecian 
thought.  These  in  their  beginnings,  are  crude  enough  and 
in  part  (as  Thracian)  are  not  what  we  usually  think  of  as 
Greek,  though  Thrace  was  really  Greek  and  probably  the 

^Tutelary  angels  and  malignant  devils.  Some  of  the  latter  are 
diseases  as  demons.  Worship  is  paid  to  the  good  spirits. 

^  2  Porphyry  wrote  in  defence  of  vegetarianism  and  against  Chris- 
tianity. He  opposed  all  amusements  and  objected  to  "injury  of 
animals."  Worship  is  not  performed  by  sacrifice  but  by  knowledge 
and  godliness  —  no  new  idea,  however,  in  Greek  thought. 


GREEK  RELIGION  5X3 

Dionysos  of  the  first  wild  cult  was  racially  an  Aryan  god, 
however  opposed  to  Achaean  or  Athenian.1  How  much  this 
cult  was  affected  by  Cretan  thought  and  ritual  we  cannot 
say,  nor  how  early  it  and  the  Demeter  cult  began  to  broaden 
the  old  Zeus-religion.  One  point,  however,  should  be  kept 
in  mind.  The  old  religion  was  not  one  of  mere  form  and 
ritual.  It  was  ethical  to  a  high  degree  even  in  Homer 
and  not  even  the  brotherhood  of  man  is  an  idea  quite  un- 
known to  its  earlier  stage.  Its  ethics  did  not  coincide  with 
ours.  For  example,  to  be  chaste  and  not  to  steal  or  lie  are 
not  rules  included  in  pre-Orphic  religion;  but  it  is  no  little 
achievement  for  a  polytheistic  nature-religion,  even  before 
man  began  to  dream  of  a  heavenly  reward  for  earthly  virtue, 
and  with  no  authoritative  scripture  or  word  of  authority, 
to  demand  mercy,  kindness,  forgiveness,  care  of  the  stranger, 
the  sanctity  of  the  suppliant  and  of  marriage,  the  inviola- 
bility of  an  oath,  and  to  teach  that  the  prayers  of  men  are 
heard  as  entreaties  or  as  curses  by  heavenly  powers. 

We  have  no  right,  however,  to  stop  with  this.  We  must 
recognize  the  purely  Greek  nature  of  Stoic  theology  and 
ethics,  the  Greek  acceptance  (if  not  origin)  of  the  idea  of 
spiritual  purity,  and  the  Greek  character  underlying  the 
idealistic  monism  of  Plotinus.  On  the  other  hand,  we  are 
apt  to  idealize  somewhat  both  the  sunny  religion  of  the 
earlier  Greeks  and  the  philosophic  acumen  of  the  later,  for- 
getting that  the  earlier  religion  was  compact  with  the  gross- 
est superstition,  much  nastiness,  and  no  little  savagery,  and 
that  the  latter  reeked  with  magical  practices.  Nor  can  we 
suppose  that  the  works  of  philosophers  were  ever  conned 
by  the  masses  who,  however,  were  well  acquainted  with 
magic,  and  remained  superstitious  to  the  end. 

The  religion  of  Greece  is  the  only  great  religion  —  there 
are  but  seven  —  which  is  built  upon  human  thought  without 
appeal  to  inspired  authority.  The  oracles  were  supposed 
to  be  divine  revelations,  but  they  constituted  no  religious 

1  The  Thracian  Getai  believed  that  the  dead  lived  with  their  god 
in  a  paradise  below  earth.  Herodotus  iv.  941. 


514  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

system,  and  the  Delphic  oracle  rather  appealed  to  philosophy 
than  attempted  to  govern  it.  The  religion,  in  so  far  as  one 
can  speak  of  it  as  one  religion,  was  not  hampered  by  dogma- 
tism. The  utterances  of  one  teacher  were  stoutly  but  safely 
denied  by  another.  There  was  no  authoritative  sacerdotal 
orthodoxy  to  hinder  free  expression  of  opinion,  though  oc- 
casionally the  mob  objected  violently  to  impiety ;  but  it  was 
the  mob  and  not  the  priests  who  were  illiberal.  The  reli- 
gion of  China  might  be  considered  a  parallel;  but  prac- 
tically Chinese  religion,  inspired  by  Shang  Ti,  was  dictated 
also  by  authority,  and  discussion  was  limited  to  ethics,  at 
least  for  a  thousand  years.  Brahmans,  Buddhists,  Zoro- 
astrians,  Hebrews,  all  those  who  had  an  intellectual  reli- 
gion, held  it  subject  to  orthodox  approval.1  Heterodoxy 
was  overthrown  in  Egypt  as  soon  as  it  arose.  Babylon  had 
no  ideas,  or  not  enough  to  provoke  heresy;  Rome  never 
thought  for  herself.  After  Greece,  Europe  believed  along 
received  lines  or  hid  her  belief.  Apart  therefore  from  the 
clarity  and  logical  brilliancy  of  Greek  thought,  apart  also 
from  the  beauty  which  has  transfused  all  she  received  and 
created,  there  remains  the  unique  character  of  her  genius, 
which  united  ethics  and  metaphysics  into  a  religion  based  not 
on  superstition  but  on  philosophy,  not  on  faith  but  on  logic, 
yet  in  which  due  place  was  given  to  emotion.  It  is  a  very 
wonderful  creation,  though  the  very  lack  of  authority  re- 
sulted in  the  demolition  of  this  edifice  of  the  mind  as  soon 
as  the  mind  itself  began  to  fail ;  for  the  image  of  every  god 
falls  when  its  foundation  crumbles. 

1As  has  been  shown  above,  all  Brahmanic  philosophy  had  to  be 
based  on  the  divine  word  of  the  Veda;  no  Buddhistic  sect  but 
based  its  creed  on  Buddha's  own  teaching ;  no  Zoroastrian  sect  but 
emphasized  its  belief  in  Zoroaster's  creed.  It  is  often  said  that  the 
State  in  China  did  not  persecute  heresy,  but  the  Confucian  books 
were  burned  as  soon  as  the  State  found  them  objectionable  and  all 
those  who  taught  them  were  buried  alive  (see  p.  227).  At  a  later 
date  religious  persecution  in  China  drove  out  all  foreign  religions 
(p.  266). 


GREEK  RELIGION  5*5 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

J.  E.  Harrison,  Prolegomena  to  the  Study  of  Greek  Religion, 

Cambridge,  1903. 

H.  Munro  Chadwick,  The  Heroic  Age,  Cambridge,  1912. 
L.  R.  Farnell,  The  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  Oxford,   1896- 

1909;    The   Higher   Aspects    of   Greek   Religion,    Hibbert 

Lectures,  London,  1911. 
Arthur  Fairbanks,  A  Handbook  of  Greek  Religion,  New  York, 

1910. 
O.    Gruppe,    Griechische  Mythologie  und  Religionsgeschichte, 

Miiller's  Handbuch,  Munich,  1897. 

T.  D.  Seymour,  Life  in  the  Homeric  Age,  New  York,  1907. 
E.  Zeller,  A  History  of  Greek  Philosophy,  London,  1881. 
Gilbert  Murray,  Four  Stages  of  Greek  Religion,  New  York, 

1912. 

C.   H.   Moore,    The  Religious  Thought   of  the   Greeks,  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.,  1916. 
See  also  the  works  mentioned  above,  p.  484,  note  2. 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-THREE 

THE  RELIGION   OF  THE   ROMANS 

THE  question  whether  Roman  religion  in  its  earliest  known 
form  represents  the  mixed  religion  of  two  races,  one  re- 
flected in  the  beliefs  of  the  plebeians  and  the  other  in  that 
of  the  patricians,  is  and  probably  always  will  be  impossible 
to  answer.  There  was  doubtless  a  native  population,  Ligu- 
rian,  Pelasgian,  or  otherwise  called,  overpowered  by  a  for- 
eign immigrating  host,  such  a  host  as  in  Greece  demarcates 
Achaean  from  "  Pelasgian  "  elements.  But  the  Greek  hy- 
pothesis applied  to  Rome  is  not  easy  to  substantiate.  The 
mixture  remains  more  theory  than  fact.  Rome,  as  we  know 
it,  consisted  of  a  native  population  closely  related  religiously 
to  other  Italic  settlements  and,  very  near  the  beginning  of 
its  history,  united  with  the  neighbouring  Sabines,  whose  god 
Quirinus  was  soon  identified  with  the  Roman  Mars. 

From  the  first,  Rome  was  a  State  of  families  and  clans, 
agricultural  but  bellicose,  yet  controlled  by  law,  which  con- 
cerned itself  equally  with  things  divine  and  human.  In 
fact,  as  India  may  be  said  to  be  religion  incarnate,  and  as 
Greece  is  beauty  and  philosophy,  so  Rome  is  war  and  law. 
Its  earliest  religious  expression  is  found  in  legalized  and 
ritualized  war-dances  and  lustrations  under  the  care  of  the 
war-god.  The  earliest  conception  of  the  sky-god  is  that 
of  a  State-god  who  kills,  Jupiter  Latiaris  and  Feretrius, 
The  agricultural  community  depended  for  its  security  on  the 
war-god,  who  was  conceived  therefore  as  a  god  of  fruits 
and  fights.  Before  the  discussion  of  other  aspects  of  Ro- 
man religion,  the  whole  character  of  that  religion  may  best 
be  discovered  through  the  study  of  the  two  chief  divinities 
recognized  by  it. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS 

Rome's  civic  religion  consisted  at  first  in  the  strict  ob- 
servance of  duties  toward  Mars  and  other  political  spirits 
under  the  supervision  of  the  king,  who  was  the  civic  high 
priest;  as  in  each  family  the  pater  familias  was  the  chief 
priest  of  the  family  spirits.  But  as  Rome  itself  never  pro- 
duced a  philosopher  with  new  ideas,  so  it  drew  its  civic  cult 
from  its  more  civilized  neighbours,  the  Etruscans,1  through 
whom  were  filtered  foreign  notions,  in  regard  to  art,  archi- 
tecture, the  ritual  (games,  scenic  shows),  and  even  the  gods. 
It  had,  according  to  tradition,  no  religious  institutions  at 
all  till  they  were  established  by  the  Sabine  Numa  half  a  cen- 
tury after  the  city  was  built.  It  is  significant  that  Numa 
was  first  of  all  a  legislator;  to  the  Romans,  the  State-reli- 
gion was  a  legislative  measure,  a  legal  matter,  not  a  matter 
of  feeling  or  of  philosophy.  As  a  back-ground  to  the  civic 
religion  may  be  imagined  such  primitive  ideas  as  are  both 
the  property  of  other  uncivilized  races  and  the  implied  in- 
heritance of  Rome,  taboos,  still  operative  for  the  priest, 
such  as  of  knots  and  iron  and  wheat,  the  first  because  knots 
through  sympathetic  magic  interfered  with  a  smooth  reli- 
gious line,  the  last  two  because  iron  and  wheat  were  once 
novelties,  condemned  ipso  facto,  since  religion  is  conserva- 
tive and  dislikes  innovation.  At  birth  and  death  also  there 
were  taboos,  such  as  are  found  generally  among  savages. 
Places  struck  by  lightning  were  of  course  of  religious  inter- 
est and  there  was  a  disposition  to  regard  odd  numbers  as 
lucky  (numero  deus  impare  gaudet),  so  that  the  first  and 
third  days  of  the  month  were  more  suited  for  gods'  days 
than  the  second  and  fourth,  a  superstition  still  current 
("  there's  luck  in  odd  numbers  ").  Sympathetic  magic  may 
also  be  revealed  in  the  slaughter  of  animals  to  procure  rain 
and  crops,  the  use  of  images  transfixed  to  produce  a  like 
effect  upon  a  foe,  the  swinging-rite,  the  magic  ever  prac- 
ticed by  old  women  at  child-birth,  and  perhaps  the  use  of 

1  More  remotely,  the  Etruscan  art  of  divination  was  in  part  Baby- 
lonian, perhaps  by  way  of  Minpan  culture.  Racial  connexion  be- 
tween Minoan  and  Etruscan  civilization  in  the  Bronze  Age  is  sus- 
pected but  not  certain. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

amulets  and  other  charms,  such  as  incantations  or  spells, 
carmina,  some  of  which  have  been  incorporated  into  the 
State-ritual.  On  the  whole,  however,  the  State  religion  dis- 
couraged the  practice  of  magic,  though  it  retained  old  con- 
servative objections  to  novelties  which  were  really  based 
on  a  magical  foundation.1 

It  is  sometimes  maintained  that  all  this  antedates  religion 
and  that  the  great  Roman  gods  are  a  later  stage  of  a  reli- 
gion once  consisting  wholly  in  magic  and  animism.  But  all 
such  statements  are  based  on  the  a  priori  conviction  that 
magic  must  precede  religion,  whereas  as  a  historical  fact 
magic  makes  no  step  which  converts  it  into  religion  in  Rome. 
From  the  beginning  great  gods  are  there,  as  well  as  little 
gods  and  those  animistic  sexless  spirits  which  are  in  truth 
merely  vivified  things  and  actions.  Yet  even  among  these 
some  from  the  first  have  personality,  and  it  is  questionable 
whether  the  host  of  these  Numina  (Powers)  was  not  largely 
the  result  of  later  systematizing  thought.  What  is  true  is 
that  even  the  greater  spirits  show  little  myth-making  thought. 
Mythology  is  poetry,  due  to  imagination,  and  even  the  Poly- 
nesians had  more  religious  imagination  than  the  Romans. 
Consequently,  when  the  early  Romans  had  raised  a  Door- 
power  to  a  Power  representing  any  entrance  or  beginning 
in  place  or  time,  that  is  when  they  changed  a  janua  or  janus 
(door  or  gate)  into  a  Janus,  looking  two  ways,  whose  dou- 
ble door  was  always  open  except  in  times  of  war,  they 
made  no  myths  about  him.  They  invoked  him  at  the  be- 
ginning of  a  prayer,  because  he  was  the  beginning-spirit,  and 
associated  him  as  Matutinus  Pater  with  the  Dawn  (of  day 
and  of  life,  Mater  Matuta),  and  as  Portunus  with  ports,  be- 
cause a  voyage  begins  there.  But  until  the  later  poets  got 
hold  of  him  and  Augustus  made  his  gate  famous  by  boast- 
ing that  the  Janus  doors  had  thrice  been  closed  (indicating 
perfect  peace)  under  the  emperor,  no  one  paid  him  more 

1  The  priestess  of  Jupiter  called  Flaminia  Dialis  was  not  permit- 
ted to  wear  leather  shoes  of  the  usual  kind,  just  as  the  Flamen 
Dialis  was  subjected  to  taboos  in  regard  to  eating  beans,  wearing 
iron,  contact  with  a  corpse,  etc. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  519 

than  perfunctory  honour;  he  was  unknown  to  other  Italic 
settlements.  The  first  month  may  be  named  for  him.  He 
is  called  divom  deus,  but  only  as  god  of  firsts;  he  had  no 
early  temple  and  no  early  inscriptions  are  devoted  to  his 
cult.1  As  Door-spirit  he  is  paired  with  Vesta  the  Hearth- 
fire. 

Janus  (Janus-pater,  but  also  fern.  Jana),  the  apotheosis 
of  the  Numina,  has  a  cult  old  but  mechanical,  though  he  is 
the  highest  of  the  indefinitely  varied  Roman  host  whose 
members  are  all  personified  abstractions,  such  as  Silvanus, 
the  wood-power,  Faunus,  the  wild-animal  power,  Terminus, 
the  boundary-power,  Fons  and  Flora,  spring-  and  blossom- 
powers.  In  contrast  with  Janus,  Mars  called  Father,  Mars- 
pater  (-piter),  was  not  simply  Roman  but  Italian  (Oscan, 
Umbrian,  perhaps  Etruscan),  and  from  the  beginning  he 
was  no  mere  sexless  Power.  The  first  month  of  the  older 
year,  beginning  in  March,  was  called  by  his  name  in  Rome 
and  elsewhere.  His  name  was  taken  by  men.2  The  very 
old  Brotherhood  called  the  Arvales  invoked  him  to  keep  evil 
from  the  inhabitants  (herds  and  flocks).  The  priests  called 
the  Salii  danced  in  his  honour  as  the  high-stepping  (Gradi- 
vus)  god  of  war,  and  war-arms  made  part  of  their  furnish- 
ing, while  a  war-steed  was  sacrificed  to  him  when  the  war- 
season  was  over  in  October.3  His  sacred  animals  were 
fighting  wolves  and  woodpeckers,  after  whom  some  tribes 
called  themselves  (Hirpini,  Picenti).  With  him  was  asso- 
ciated, near  the  temple  of  Mars  at  Porta  Capena,  the  cult  of 
Honos  and  Virtus  (bravery)  and  his  energy  was  represented 
as  a  personified  Neria  (cf.  avrjp  and  Sk.  nar  =  zrir) ;  also  as 

1  Some   ancient  and   modern   writers   falsely  interpret  Janus   as 
sun-god  or  sky-god;  but  he  is  nothing  but  a  door,  gate,  beginning. 
The  rex  sacrprum  was  especially  his  priest,  as  religious  ceremonies 
began  with  him. 

2  Mars  is  the  only  god  whose  name  is  used  as  a  human  proper 
name ;  perhaps,  too,  as  month-name   (Janus  and  Juno  are  doubt- 
ful). 

3  This   October-horse  is  often  cited  as  a  proof  that  Mars  was 
originally  a  vegetable-spirit;  but  see  below  and  compare  the  combi- 
nation of  war-and-fertility  god  among  Mayas,  Hindus,  etc. 


520  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Bellona,  to  whom  a  temple  was  erected  B.  c.  296.  His 
Sabine  form,  Quirinus,  has  left  faint  traces  of  a  separate 
cult,  but  was  generally  looked  upon  as  one  with  Mars,  per- 
haps as  his  more  peaceful  side,  until  the  later  Romans  made 
Quirinus  a  name  of  Romulus.  The  Campus  Martius  had 
an  early  altar  to  Mars  at  which  the  suovetaurilia  sacrifice 
of  boar,  ram,  and  bull,  was  offered,  partly  to  thank  him  for 
former  favours  and  partly  to  incite  him  to  fresh  efforts,  a 
sacrifice  made  every  five  years,  after  the  sacrificial  animals 
had  encircled  the  people  drawn  up  as  an  army.  A  similar 
sacrifice  occurred  with  a  corresponding  circuit  of  the  fields, 
and  this  also  has  given  rise  to  the  idea  that  Mars  was  origin- 
ally a  god  of  vegetation.  But  primitive  tribal  gods  were  not 
confined  to  one  specialty.  The  god  of  a  tribe  saw  to  the 
tribe,  whether  in  war  or  peace,  increasing  their  crops  and 
their  strength  alike.  The  war-like  Romans  made  Mars  more 
warlike  than  agricultural  and,  had  we  to  choose,  the  god's 
paraphernalia  would  make  us  prefer  as  starting  point  at 
least  for  Rome  the  conception  of  war-god.  At  any  rate,  to 
Rome  he  was  at  all  time  god  of  war,  though  at  first  equally 
god  of  agriculture.  The  country-folks  kept  his  agricul- 
tural side ;  the  martial  townsmen  and  army  preserved  him  as 
war-god.  At  first  he  was  simply  clan-god,  who  protected 
his  clan  against  foes  spiritual  and  human. 

If  Mars  was  the  nearest  god  to  the  Roman,  Jupiter  (Um- 
brian  Jupater)  was  the  greatest.  In  his  case  also  we  have 
to  do  with  a  god  who  was  more  than  Roman.  Yet  the  con- 
ception of  Jupiter  (or  Juppiter)  was  not  exactly  that  of 
his  Grecian  parallel,  a  celestial  being  on  a  hill  or  in  the 
clouds.  Jupiter  was  rather  the  sky  itself  ("sub  jove 
frigido"),  less  person  than  personified  phenomenon.  In 
other  parts  of  Latium  he  is  known  as  Diovis  or  Jovis  and 
the  meaning  of  his  name  is  clearly  "  shining  "  sky  (Diespiter, 
Dianus,  Lucetius).  Sometimes,  however,  he  is  not  the  day- 
sky  but  the  dark  night-sky,  when  as  Summanus  he  receives 
dark  instead  of  white  animals  in  sacrifice.  As  Latin  god, 
he  is  called  Juppiter  indiges  and  he  is  in  fact,  after  Janus, 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  521 

the  first  of  the  Indigites,  that  is,  the  native  gods  in  distinc- 
tion from  the  Novensides  or  immigrant  settler  gods,  such 
as  Minerva,  Mercurius,  etc.,  afterwards  imported  into  Rome 
from  Etruria  and  Greece. 

The  temple  of  Jupiter  was  on  the  heights  nearest  to  the 
sky,  whence  as  Feretrius  (smiter)  he  sent  his  lightning. 
As  god  of  the  sky,  too,  he  was  revered  as  the  power  giving 
rain  and  fruitfulness  or  fulness  (Liber),  which  caused  him 
to  be  called  almus  and  frugifer  and  liber  alls,  whence  later 
came  his  aspect  as  Libertas,  still  later  understood  as  liberty. 
As  Liber,  the  vine  was  his  care  and  the  feast  called  Vinalia, 
like  the  Pithoigia  of  the  Greeks,  a  feast  of  wine-cultivators. 
His  day  was  the  full-moon  day  (Ides)  of  every  month, 
when  light  lasts  all  hours.  But  it  was  especially  as  a  civic 
god  that  he  was  honoured.  The  god  of  right  and  victory  em- 
bodying the  Roman  ideals  was  the  Capitoline  Jupiter  called 
Optimus  Maximus  (his  best  and  greatest  form).  There, 
on  the  Capitoline,  a  temple  was  built  to  him  and  there  was 
his  earliest  altar  as  a  god  of  victory.  Afterwards  this 
aspect  of  him  as  victor  caused  the  creation  of  an  abstract 
Victoria,  a  goddess  to  whom  a  temple  was  dedicated  B.  c. 
294.  Jupiter  himself,  as  Victor  and  Stator,  had  been  hon- 
oured in  the  same  way  the  year  before.  His  emblem  is  the 
thunder-bolt  stone  (silex),  which  gives  him  the  title  Jupiter 
Lapis.  But  we  need  not  imagine  that  Jupiter  was  originally 
either  an  oak,  because  it  was  his  tree,  or  this  silex,  and  then 
a  god  holding  a  stone  (bolt),  as  is  sometimes  taught.  For 
the  history  of  the  god  *  shows  clearly  that  he  was  from  the 
beginning  a  sky-god.  This  stone,  perhaps  originally  a  di- 
vine thunder-stone,  was  carried  by  the  Fetiales,  a  college  of 

1  No  one  has  yet  attempted  to  show  that  Zeus-pater,  Ju-piter, 
and  Dyaus-pitar,  are  not  the  same  "bright  (sky)  father,"  the 
most  incontestable  and  important  fact  in  the  history  of  Aryan 
civilization.  But  many  scholars  who,  on  a  priori  grounds,  assert 
that  Sky  cannot  be  a  primitive  god,  assume  that  the  oak  and  silex 
were  divine  before  the  sky  and  that  therefore  they  are  the  real  god. 
The  obvious  conclusion,  however,  would  be  that,  if  previously  di- 
vine, they  became,  with  the  advent  of  the  Sky  as  god,  his  interpreters, 
not  that  Jupiter  was  originally  a  tree  or  a  stone. 


522  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

priests,  whose  duty  it  was  to  make  and  preserve  treaties 
under  religious  sanction,  and  the  god  they  revered  was 
Jupiter  Fidius,  from  which  conjunction  also,  as  in  the  case 
of  Victoria,  was  evolved  a  goddess  Fides.  As  god  of  oaths, 
right,  and  faith,  Jupiter  was  the  chief  political  god  of  the 
Republic,  but  also  in  private  matters  a  god  of  troth  (wit- 
ness-god in  weddings,  etc.),  to  whom,  under  the  name  Ter- 
minus, boundary-lines  were  entrusted.  But  always  the  fun- 
damental meaning  of  the  god  reappears.  The  augurs,  who 
studied  the  sky,  were  his  as  interpretes  Jovis.  In  drought, 
matrons  with  bare  feet  and  loosened  hair  took  part  in  the 
aquaelicium  or  rite  of  eliciting  water  from  Elicius,  Jupiter 
Pluvialis,  on  the  Aventine.  As  concomitant  and  cause  of 
rain  he  was  also  called  Tonans,  even  Fulgur,  lightning  and 
rain  coming  together.  Being  god  of  all  Latins  he  was  cele- 
brated as  Latiaris  Jupiter  on  Mt.  Albanus,  in  a  sacrifice 
without  wine  and  marked  by  a  swinging  festival,  such  as  is 
found  in  India,  to  increase  the  power  of  the  sun.  His 
*'  wife,"  Juno  or  Jovia,  was  an  Italian  goddess,  known  to  the 
Umbrians  as  Lucina  and  Regina  (like  Belit,  Our  Lady 
Queen) .  She  was  also  conceived  as  armed  with  lightning ;  but 
she  generally  appears  as  the  feminine  side  of  Jupiter,  the 
power  especially  concerned  with  women.  Hers  were  the 
strips  of  goat-skin,  which  caused  fertility  when  women  were 
struck  with  them  in  the  rite  called  Lupercalia.  Her  day 
was  the  first  day  of  each  moon  (month)  and  certain  aspects 
of  her  cult  make  it  possible  that  she  herself  was  originally 
the  moon.  In  Greece  also,  Dione  (Juno)  was  the  older 
consort  of  Zeus.  Juno  was  not  of  any  importance  at  first 
as  a  State-goddess.  She  may  have  come  from  some  neigh- 
bouring town,  perhaps  as  Latin  goddess  of  Veii.  Goddesses 
were  more  powerful  out  of  Rome  than  in  it,  perhaps  owing 
to  a  difference  socially  in  the  power  of  women  or  to  the 
fact  that  matrilinear  rights  had  been  given  up  by  the  Ro- 
mans. The  strongest  point  in  her  character  as  Moon-god- 
dess is  her  connection  with  women  as  Lucina  of  the  Kalends ; 
but  this  is  not  decisive.  She  may  have  been  to  Jupiter  as 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  523 

Moles  and  Neria  were  to  Mars,  merely  the  feminine  side  or 
the  power  as  feminine.1  Women  swore  by  Juno,  their  own 
feminine  power,  as  men  by  their  virility,  Genius. 

The  history  of  Jupiter  reflects  not  only  the  enlargement 
of  Rome  politically  but  its  religious  growth.  He  is  grouped 
with  Mars  and  Quirinus  and  this  indicates  the  period  of 
union  of  the  first  three  communities,  with  Rome  as  the  most 
important ;  but  this  group  soon  yields  to  that  of  Jupiter, 
Juno,  and  Minerva,  which  marks  the  first  Graeco-Etruscan 
influence.  There  was  originally  only  one  goddess  of  great 
importance  at  Rome.  She  was  Vesta,  the  Hearth-fire  (in 
distinction  from  Volcanus,  destructive  fire),2  who  was 
paired  with  Janus,  as  Door  and  Hearth,  and  like  him  was 
intimately,  as  well  as  publicly,  revered.  Her  relationship 
to  the  Greek  Hestia  is  obvious,  yet  she  was  not  borrowed 
from  Greece.  To  Vesta  offerings  were  made  after  dinner 
by  the  household ;  as  a  State  divinity  she  was  served  by  vir- 
gins and  her  sacred  fire  was  renewed  yearly  on  the  (old) 
New  Year's  Day.  Her  cult  was  in  charge  of  the  Pontifex 
Maximus  and  any  Vestal  who  violated  her  vows  was  buried 
alive,  as  happened  in  217  B.  c.,  in  the  Punic  war,  when 
other  victims  suffered  the  same  fate,  but  as  offerings  to  the 
lower  gods.  As  spirit  of  the  hearth,  Vesta  was  associated 
with  the  Di  Penates,  Numina  of  the  pantry  or  food-supply, 
and  with  the  Lares,  spirits,  who  may  have  been  ancestral, 
presiding  over  the  family  in  a  larger  sense,  including  the 
fields  and  the  house  (Lar  Familiaris).  The  little  spirits  of 
the  fields  and  woods,  such  as  Flora  and  Silvanus,  or  for 
the  garden  and  cattle,  Pomona  and  Bubona,  were  of  im- 
portance to  the  house-holder,  but  only  Census  and  Ops  and 
Saturnus  became  great,  withal  because  they  represented  the 

1  In  India  the  god  Indra   (war-god)   is  called  "  lord  of  power " 
and  soon  Power  becomes  his  "  wife,"  helped  to  that  dignity  through 
the  fact  that  "  lord  "  also  means  husband.    Juno,  however,  was  not 
"  wife  of  Jove,"  but  a  Latin  goddess  carried  to   Rome  after  the 
Romans  conquered  the  city  where  she  was  chief  divinity. 

2  Vulcan  is  the  lightning  (incendiary)  fire.     The  volcano  is  Vedi- 
ovis,  who  lightens  and  thunders   from  below,  associated   with  the 
Manes.     See  Frothingham,  Am.  J.  Phil,  xxxviii.  p.  370. 


524  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

harvest-store  and  sowing  of  grain,  as  publicly  recognized 
in  State  ceremonials.  There  was  also  an  insignificant  water- 
spirit  called  Neptunus,  who  first  became  important  when 
the  Romans  identified  him  with  Poseidon.  The  later  Ro- 
mans made  a  list  of  functional  spirits,  that  is,  spirits  repre- 
senting mere  functions,  such  as  Edulia,  Pbtina,  Domiduca, 
Eating,  Drinking,  Home-bringing,  etc.,  but  many  if  not 
most  of  them  were  probably  later  abstractions,  like  the  ab- 
straction Roma,  eventually  deified. 

Among  the  primitive  Roman  gods  must  be  reckoned  also 
the  Genius  and  Di  Manes.  The  Genius  was  a  man's  own 
creative  power,  which  was  regarded  almost  as  a  separate 
entity,  even  as  the  marriage-god.  Later,  every  family  and 
tribe  or  town  had  its  genius,  so  that  by  200  B.  c.  we  find 
reverence  paid  to  the  Genius  of  the  Roman  People,  as  if  it 
were  a  guardian  spirit.  The  Genius  of  a  man  was  feted 
on  his  birthday.  The  departed  spirits,  called  Di,  were  hon- 
oured (compare  the  Eumenides)  as  good,  Manes,  kindly 
disposed,  or  were  so  named  that  they  might  be  kind.  Though 
called  gods,  they  were  recognzed  as  spirits,  which  had 
gone  down  to  the  earth-deity  or  later  to  Orcus  under  earth.1 
Persons  represented  them  with  masks  at  funerals  and  to 
them,  on  the  tenth  day  after  the  funeral,  gifts  of  food  were 
made.  They  were  also  supposed  to  return  through  the 
mnndus,  an  opening  in  the  ground  in  the  Forum.  The  dead 
man  was  carried  feet  foremost  through  the  door  and  his 
house  was  then  purified,  as  if  to  prevent  his  return.  In 
May  the  old  Lemuria  rite  made  it  necessary  for  the  house- 
father to  offer  the  ghosts  beans  and  bid  them  go;  but  in 
February  they  were  honoured  with  kindly  services  at  the 
Parentalia  and  Feralia.  In  this  double  cult  there  was  doubt- 
less retained  the  view  of  ghosts  as  evil  spirits  together  with 
the  more  advanced  or  super-added  view  of  the  family  spirits 
as  protecting  powers.  It  is  possible  that,  as  suggested 

1  The  CTilt  of  underworld  gods  is  due  to  Greek  thought.  The 
primitive  Italian  population  thought  little  of  the  underworld  but 
had  an  earth-deity. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  525 

above,  the  Lares  were  also  originally  conceived  as  larvae, 
ghosts,  since  Laverna  was  goddess  of  the  dead.  But  there 
was  no  real  worship  of  the  dead.  They  were  thought  of  as 
massed  spirits  only,  not  as  individual  heroes,  as  in  Greece. 
Mother  Earth,  Tellus  Mater,  was  revered  as  a  fostering 
mother  in  conjunction  with  the  crop-making  Ceres,  though 
also  as  a  goddess  associated  with  the  Manes,  who  vanished 
through  a  hole  in  the  ground  and  were  received  by  her,  as  in 
Celtic  belief.  But  in  general  the  Romans  did  not  pay  much 
attention  to  the  dead  or  to  a  life  to  come,  till  Greek  rites  and 
philosophy  taught  them  to  hope  for  a  happy  hereafter. 
Even  then  the  view  of  the  learned  was  often  that  of  Pliny, 
who  says  that  man  is  an  animal  like  other  animals  and 
ought  not  to  expect  a  future  for  himself  different  from  that 
of  other  animals.  Life  was  enough  for  the  Roman;  his 
main  concern  with  the  dead  was  to  treat  them  properly 
and  then  be  rid  of  them.  Originally  he  regarded  them 
merely  as  a  swarm  of  evil-minded  ghosts  and  maltreated 
them,  somewhat  as  he  did  other  spirits  whom  he  suspected 
of  evil  intent  and  kept  away  by  hacking  at  them  and  sweep- 
ing them  out  of  the  house,  as  did  the  Greeks  and  as  do  the 
Eskimo  and  Shaman  today.1 

Naturally,  to  an  agricultural  community,  the  spirit  of  good 
crops  was  of  prime  importance  and  among  the  early  tem- 
ples of  Rome  one  was  built  by  Servius  Tullius  to  such  a 
goddess,  under  the  name  of  the  fertile,  Fortuna.  This  god- 
dess was  later  identified  with  the  Greek  goddess  of  fortune 
as  good  luck  and  became  the  greatest  of  those  abstract  fe- 
male powers,  such  as  Virtus,  Concordia,  Pietas,  who  re- 
ceived not  only  poetic  recognition  but  a  practical  service 
with  an  altar  and  cult.  She  may  have  been  a  Sabine  deity. 

With  the  growth  of  Rome,  new  divinities,  absorbed  from 
neighbouring  states,  began  to  be  recognized,  such  as  Diana 
of  Aricia,  a  goddess  of  the  wild,  whose  cult  was  taken  over 
by  Rome  when  Rome  became  head  of  the  Latin  league  and 

1  The  burial  of  ordinary  Romans  was  merely  casting  them  into  a 
pit.  Only  distinguished  Romans  of  the  Republic  had  special  tombs. 


526  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

later  became  one  with  the  cult  of  Artemis  (431  B.C.).  It 
is  probable  also  that  Minerva  was  not  originally  Roman  but 
was  received  from  Falerii,  perhaps  the  local  goddess  of 
handicraft,  afterwards  goddess  of  wisdom,  identified  with 
Athene.  Her  festivals  came  in  March  and  June  and  she 
has  been  thought  to  be  Etruscan ;  but  Etruria  was  a  land 
through  which  Greek  divinities  came  in  altered  form  to 
Rome  and  she  may  have  been  Greek  from  the  first.1  By 
way  of  Etruria  and  lower  Italy,  which  was  Greek,  came 
other  religious  innovations.  Castor  and  Pollux  and  Hercu- 
les came  thus  as  gods  of  merchants,  who  also  introduced 
Hermes  as  Mercurius  (trade-god).  All  these  gods  had 
their  days  of  celebration2  as  they  had  temples  (Castor's 
temple  as  early  as  485  B.C.).  They  first  became  Italian 
and  then  thoroughly  Roman,  thus  paving  the  way  for  future 
immigration  from  Greece.  Yet  the  feriae  or  festival  days 
show  that  the  old  gods  were  for  a  long  time  the  main  reli- 
gious factors  of  Rome.  It  has  already  been  remarked  that 
all  Ides  were  sacred  to  Jupiter  and  all  Kalends  to  Janus 
and  Juno.  The  principal  festivals  in  old  days  were  agri- 
cultural and  military.  The  first  month  was  sacred  to  Mars, 
who  remained  the  chief  deity  in  the  lustration  of  fields,  from 
which  he  kept  off  evil.  Agricultural  interests  are  repre- 
sented also  in  the  next  month,  when  cows  were  sacrificed,  as 
instruments  of  fertility,  to  Earth,  and  Ceres  was  revered. 
Then  too  firebrands  were  tied  to  foxes  let  loose  over  the 
fields,  to  scare  away  crop-injuring  demons,  and  Pales  was 

1  The   fact  that  she  made  one  of  the  triad,   Jupiter,  Juno,  and 
Minerva,  shows  that  Greek  influence  was  already  felt. 

2  The  year  was  divided  into  days  fit  for  legal  business  and  other 
days,  though  some  days  were  "  split,"  fissi,  half  profane  and  half 
sacred.     Days  were  thus  fasti,  fir  for  business,  or  nefasti,  that  is, 
holy,   because   it   was    wrong   to   conduct   business    on    such    days. 
Vergil  says  that  there  is  no  divine  or  human   law   against  doing 
some  work  festis  diebus   (Georgics  I.  268).     The  holy  days  were 
109  in  the  year,  generally  days  counted  as  lucky  (odd  days).     Dies 
religiosi  were  vit'wsi,  days  on   which   no  undertaking,   religious   or 
profane,  might  be  begun,  such  as  days  devoted  to  the  cult  of  the 
dead  or  days  of  public  misfortune. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  527 

worshipped  by  shepherds,  also  by  the  State,  as  god  or  god- 
dess of  productivity  (the  feast  was  called  Parilia,  from 
pario?)  ;  but  the  most  striking  feature  of  this  festival  was 
that  men  and  cattle  were  passed  through  or  over  fire  as  a 
means  of  purification.  Shortly  after  this,  red  mildew  was 
propitiated,  as  Mars,  by  the  sacrifice  of  a  red  dog  (Robi- 
galia,  April  25th).  In  May,  came  the  Lemuria  or  rite  of 
expelling  ghosts  (above)  and  the  Fratres  Arvales  or  broth- 
erhood of  ploughmen  undertook  to  keep  evil  from  the  crops 
by  their  lustration,  a  purificatory  ceremony  consisting  in 
dancing  along  the  boundary  lines  and  making  offerings  of 
the  suovctaurilia  with  an  apotropaic  litany  against  pests.1 
Census  and  Ops,  the  harvest-horde  deities,  were  honoured 
in  August.  A  formal  sacrifice  was  made  to  them  at  an 
underground  altar  in  the  Circus  Maximus,  where  grain  was 
stored  (as  usual  in  cellars),  whence  the  goddess  Ops  became 
associated  with  underground  powers;  they  were  honoured 
again  in  December,  when  Saturnus,  the  Sowing-god,  was 
celebrated  with  the  well-known  laxity  of  harvest  times  (the 
Saturnalia).  In  October  occurred  the  armilustrium  or 
purification,  when  the  army  rested  from  its  annual  duties. 
This  was  of  course  a  festival  of  Mars  and  (as  already 
stated)  to  him  at  this  time  was  sacrificed  the  war-horse. 
In  the  same  month  came  a  fountain  festival,  Fontinalia,  and 
a  wine- festival,  when  diseases  were  healed  by  drinking.  At 
the  former,  garlands  were  flung  into  springs  and  the  god- 
dess or  nymph  Juturna  (Diuturna)  was  worshipped.  She 
was  a  Latin  goddess  whom  later  myths  made  wife  of  Janus, 
as  the  latter  was  made  father  by  her  of  Fons,  to  whom  a 
temple  was  given  (231  B.C.).2  Of  all  these  rites  the 
Saturnalia  on  December  17  has  lasted  longest  in  after-ef- 

1  Later,  faces  of  Bacchus  suspended  to  trees  were  used  for  the 
same  purpose,  to  secure  fertility  (Georgics,  2,  388). 

2  The  fons  or  spring  in  these  cases  is  universalized.     Every  spring 
was  a  holy  medicinal   power.     Probably  Juturna   was  originally  a 
special  spring  whose  name  like  Arethusa  ("flowing")  was  localized. 
Vergil  makes  Juturna  sister  of  Turnus. 


528  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

fects,  since  from  it  derive  several  Christmas  customs,  such 
as  gift-giving  and  candle-illumination.  At  the  end  of  this 
Sowing  rite  came  one  in  honour  of  Tellus  and  Ceres,  Earth 
and  Grain-goddess.  December  over,  the  month  of  Janus 
celebrated  the  goddess  of  new  birth  (beginning  of  the  year) 
called  Casmenta,  originally  a  lymph  (nymph),  whose  name 
suggests  the  connexion  between  prophecy  and  the  Muses  or 
singing  water  as  an  oracle.  She  was  a  prophetess  of  birth 
rather  than  a  birth-goddess.  In  the  purifying  month  Feb- 
ruary, at  the  end  of  the  old  Roman  year,  were  performed 
rites  in  honour  of  the  dead  (Parentalia,  Feralia),  preceded 
by  the  Lupercalia,  in  which  survived  a  magical  practice 
probably  influenced  from  the  beginning  by  Greek  thought. 
The  participants  were  smeared  with  sacrificial  blood  from  a 
dog  and  goat,  wiped  in  wool  dipped  in  milk,  and  after  laugh- 
ing were  clothed  in  goat-skins  of  the  sacrifice,  when  they 
feasted  and  then  ran  around  the  Palatine,  striking  women 
with  strips  of  the  goat-skins  to  induce  fertility.  This  festi- 
val was  dedicated  to  Faunus  ("Pan").  It  was  a  wolf- 
resisting  (lup-arc eo)  rite,  according  to  the  Romans  them- 
selves and  most  modern  scholars,  though  both  etymology 
and  meaning  are  doubtful.  Probably  the  rite  was  at  first 
for  possession  of  the  herd  by  the  Luperci,  the  '*  wolf- 
warders."  Faunus  is  god  of  the  rite  to  whom  the  goat  is 
offered  (not  piacular)  ;  there  is  no  sign  of  totemism  in  this 
or  any  other  Roman  rite.  The  chief  act  originally  was  the 
amphidromion,  which  implies  the  magic  circle,  especially 
when  performed  by  naked  or  nearly  naked  people.  Hitting 
the  women  was  a  secondary  trait  introduced  in  the  third 
century.  This  is  one  of  the  few  rites  in  which  blood  is  a 
prominent  feature ;  its  presence  and  removal  show  that  the 
rite  was  then  understood  as  purificatory.  It  is  not,  as  Mann- 
hardt  thinks,  a  vegetation  rite,  but  a  mystery  in  which  the 
purificatory  wool  (a  februum)  soaks  up  the  symbol  of  death. 
The  (obligatory)  laugh  indicates  the  joy  of  the  purified. 
These  are  Greek  ideas,  which  may  have  been  introduced 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  529 

circa  200  B.  c.,  when  the  rite  was  enlarged  and  its  charac- 
ter changed.1  Its  classical  form  is  a  composite. 

There  were  several  minor  feriae  stativae  or  fixed  festivals, 
such  as  the  Blessing  of  Children,  Liberalia  (March  17),  the 
Matronalia,  Vestalia,  and  Matralia,  in  April  and  June,  the 
feast  of  Bona  Dea,  attended  only  by  women,  and  later  the 
feasts  of  foreign  divinities,  the  Megalesia  (feast  of  Cybele, 
April  4),  and  that  of  Castor  and  Pollux  (July  15).  In  the 
same  month  occurred  the  feast  of  Neptunus  as  a  sea-power. 
At  Paestum-Poseidonia  there  was  a  Greek  colony  who  hon- 
oured him  as  sea-god.  The  later  New  Year's  day  in 
honour  of  Janus  was  celebrated  January  9.  The  old  New 
Year's  day  was  celebrated  with  gross  liberty  in  honour  of 
Anna  Perenna,  the  year-goddess.  To  the  simple  celebra- 
tions of  old  days  were  added,  through  foreign  influence  dur- 
ing the  Republic,  games,  introduced  at  first  to  celebrate  a 
triumph,  which  became  popular,  and  later  to  these  games 
(of  horse-racing,  etc.)  were  added  wrestling,  dancing,  and 
dramatic  scenes,  all  as  religious  functions. 

These  new  elements,  circus  and  drama,  marked  the  wor- 
ship of  Greek  gods,  whose  cult  was  introduced  at  an  early 
date.  Before  turning,  however,  to  the  incursion  of  Greek 
influence,  it  will  be  necessary  to  indicate  the  process  by 
which  the  field  of  religion  was  kept  fruitful.  All  public 
rites  of  religion  were  performed  at  public  expense  for  the 
people  under  the  supervision  of  the  tribes  or  the  representa- 
tives of  the  State.  Sundry  brotherhoods,  before  any  formal 
colleges  of  priests  existed,  had  the  conduct  of  certain  rites 
and  these  were  retained  through  the  historical  period,  though 
their  importance  varied  at  different  times.  Such  were  the 
Salii  and  Arvales  and  Luperci  already  mentioned,  all  of 
whom  were  originally  priests  of  Mars.  About  200  B.  c.  were 
added  the  priests  of  Cybele  called  Galli,  but  no  Roman 
might  become  such  a  priest.  But  under  Etruscan  influence, 

1  See  Fowler,  Roman  Festivals,  London,  1899,  and  Deubner, 
Lupercalia  in  Archiv  fur  Religionsgeschichte,  1910,  pp.  481-508. 


530  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

as  early  as  the  sixth  century  B.  c.,  there  were  formed  State 
colleges  of  priests,  the  chief  of  whom  were  the  Pontifices 
and  Augures,  who  had  charge  of  the  whole  public  religious 
life  of  the  people.  The  Pontifices  administered  ecclesiasti- 
cal laws  which  concerned  marriage,  adoption,  testaments, 
expiation,  etc.,  prescribed  forms  and  ceremonies,  kept  the 
archives,  composed  the  calendars  and  annals,  inaugurated 
magistrates,  and  punished  persons  guilty  even  of  private 
religious  offences,  on  the  ground  that  even  a  private  crime 
violated  the  pax  deorum.  This  college  kept  a  stock  of  re- 
ligious formulas  useful  for  any  occasion  and  it  was  they 
who  drew  up  the  lis,ts  of  invocations  called  indigit amenta. 
Till  300  B.  c.  they  and  the  other  priests  were  all  patricians. 
That  some  Etruscan  divination  is  of  Babylonian  origin 
has  already  been  mentioned.  Yet  this  does  not  apply  to  all 
divination.  The  Augures  or  auspices  divined  signs  sent  by 
the  gods  by  means  of  birds  and  animals  (inspection  of  the 
liver),  and  interpreted  omens,  such  as  lightning,  sneezing, 
etc.,  much  as  did  other  Europeans.  Besides  other  less  im- 
portant colleges,  there  were  also  one  of  the  Fetiales,  insti- 
tuted by  Numa  and  presided  over  by  the  Pater  Patratus, 
which  had  treaties  under  religious  observation  and  acted 
as  guardians  of  the  public  faith.  It  was  their  office  to  con- 
clude treaties  with  religious  formality  and  to  demand  resti- 
tution when  necessary.  Their  aid  was  required  also  in  de- 
claring war.  In  the  course  of  time  the  Pontifices  became 
more  secular  than  religious  and  the  office  of  Pontifex 
Maximus  became  politically  important.  Other  religious  of- 
ficials were  special  priests  in  the  modern  sense,  whose  aco- 
lytes have  been  preserved  as  a  feature  of  the  Christian 
church.  Of  these  special  priests,  the  most  notable  were  the 
Duoviri  afterwards  (367  B.  c.)  increased  to  Decemviri,  by 
which  name  they  are  generally  known,  though  later  made 
a  college  of  Quindecimviri,1  sacrorum  or  sacris  faciundis, 

1  This  number  was  raised  to  sixteen  by  Caesar  and  even  to  more 
than  twenty  by  the  subsequent  emperors,  who  kept  the  college  till 
the  fourth  century  A.  D. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  53 l 

whose  sole  business  was  the  care  of  the  Sibylline  oracles 
and  the  rites  thereby  enjoined ;  the  three  Flamines  of  Jupi- 
ter (Flamen  Dialis),  Mars,  and  Quirinus;  and  the  Vestal 
Virgins.  These  Vestals  were  appointed  to  care  for  the 
State  fire.  They  were  chosen  by  the  Pontifex  Maximus  at 
the  age  of  six  to  ten  and  served  thirty  years,  as  initiates, 
servants  of  the  sacred  flame,  and  teachers,  one  decade  for 
each  office,  after  which  they  might  marry.  They  had  pe- 
culiar dignities  and  privileges,  such  as  front  seats  at  spec- 
tacles, freedom  from  parental  control,  the  right  of  way  even 
with  the  Pontiff.  They  wore  white  and  did  not  sacrifice. 
Their  whole  office  recognizes  Fire  as  a  god  of  purity.1 

The  connexion  thus  indicated  between  religion  and 
morality  appears  also  in  the  old  legal  requirement  that  sin- 
ners were  sacri  to  the  gods,  that  is,  it  was  left  to  offended 
gods  to  punish  sin,  possibly  implying  an  earlier  stage  in 
which  sinners  were  sacrificed,  though  there  is  no  certain 
indication  that  the  Romans  countenanced  human  sacrifices. 
It  is  true  that  the  gods  do  nothing  (as  Cicero  says)  to  make 
a  man  moral ;  they  only  make  him  healthy  and  wealthy ;  yet 
their  attitude  was  not  immoral,  as  was  that  of  the  Greek 
gods,  and  their  relations  with  man  were  based  above  all 
on  a  scrupulous  regard  for  truth  and  faith.  This  religious 
scrupulosity  is  usually  presented  as  the  most  striking  fea- 
ture of  Roman  religion.  The  vow  must  be  kept  in  letter 
and  spirit,  whether  a  private  or  a  public  undertaking,  and 
to  ensure  this  there  was  the  most  meticulous  regard  in  pre- 
serving forms.  This  is  extended  to  all  dealings  with  the 
gods  and  religion  thus  becomes  a  sort  of  heavenly  book- 
keeping, in  which  obligations  are  entered  and  met  with  dry 
exactness.  But  it  is  possible  that  this  aspect  has  been  un- 
duly emphasized.  In  the  first  place,  verbal  accuracy  in 
things  divine  is  not  unique,  for  it  is  exactly  the  attitude  of 
the  Brahman,  to  whom  a  mistake  in  pronunciation  of  a 
word  ruined  a  religious  ceremony,  and  fidelity  to  the  vow 

1  Analogies  in  Ireland  and  Peru  have  been  noticed  above  (pp.  114, 
131).  But  the  Vestals  also  to  do  with  fertility-rites. 


532  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

belongs  to  the  Negro,  whose  fetish-vow  is  as  rigidly  ob- 
served as  the  Roman's  votum.  But  more  than  this,  we 
know  Roman  religion  mainly  through  its  appearance  as  a 
State-religion  controlled  by  priests,  who  have  their  own 
way  of  being  religious  by  form.  Vows  made  to  the  gods 
were  of  course  always  a  way  of  winning  favours  desired. 
Thus,  as  the  State  promises  something  if  the  gods  will  help, 
so  the  farmer  does  also.1  Yet  there  was  no  book-keeping 
in  the  gay  but  religious  revelry  of  harvest- thanksgiving  and 
New- Year  or  spring-time  ritual.  Nor  in  private  life  was  it 
perhaps  wholly  mechanical  observance  when  the  pater 
familias  offered  his  daily  gift  to  the  house-hold  gods  and 
his  yearly  tribute  to  his  ancestral  spirits.  Probably  the  act 
of  Feretrius  inspired  religious  awe  at  all  times  and  though 
the  religious  rites  at  fixed  seasons  seem  to  adjust  relations 
with  this  or  that  god  for  the  year,  and  so  to  be  rid  of  him 
for  another  twelve-month,  yet  all  feriae  stativae  appear  to 
do  this.  There  are  even  some  Christians  who  seem  to  re- 
member Christ  only  on  Sundays  and  Christmas  Day. 

The  religious  festivals  do  show,  as  has  been  observed  by 
others,  that  the  Romans  had  passed  beyond  the  stage  where 
man  is  uncertain  of  the  Powers.  These  Powers  were  now, 
so  to  speak,  under  control.  If  the  State  fulfilled  its  recog- 
nized obligations,  the  gods  could  not  but  fulfil  theirs.  So 
much  for  so  much.  The  Roman  State  might  sleep  peace- 
fully when  it  had  secured  the  divine  blessing,  for  it  was  to 
morally  responsible  gods  that  the  Romans  looked  for  a  fair 
exchange  of  values.  Yet  even  this  is  more  a  logical  than 
an  historical  induction.  Beneath  the  contract  and  its  fulfil- 
ment, which  lie  open  for  inspection,  there  was  doubtless  the 
feeling,  not  revealed  by  documentary  evidence,  that  the  gods 
were  not  bound  by  any  contract  which  ignored  religion  in 
a  deeper  sense.  The  wild  religious  expedients  adopted  in 
the  Punic  panic,  when  men  and  women  were  buried  alive, 
a  rite  unknown  to  ordinary  occasions,  the  frequent  recourse 

1  Compare  Vergil,  votis  vocare  inbrem,  as  advice  to  the  farmer 
who  wants  rain. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  533 

to  other  gods,  whenever  the  state  was  imperilled,  all  show 
that  the  martinet  character  of  Roman  religion  was  mainly 
on  the  surface.  The  Roman  said  "  I  thank  the  gods  "  on 
every  occasion.  It  is  true,  however,  that  the  Roman,  who 
had  no  fear  of  hell  hereafter  and  no  "  sense  of  sin  "  and 
was  neither  so  imaginative  nor  emotional  as  the  Hindu  and 
Greek,  appears  to  have  taken  his  religion  very  calmly  on 
ordinary  occasions  and  that,  as  a  State-affair,  it  was  looked 
upon  as  something  outside  the  province  of  the  individual. 
Whether  the  private  man  went  to  a  feast  prepared  by  the 
State  for  a  god,  was  in  the  old  days  a  matter  of  indifference. 
If  he  observed  the  holy  day,  he  was  not  obliged  to  appear 
at  any  public  religious  function;  the  priests  did  his  public 
religious  duty  for  him,  as  his  bailiff  might  worship  the  fam- 
ily-god for  him.  He  had,  so  to  speak,  to  keep  Sunday,  but 
he  did  not  have  to  go  to  church.  Gellius  cites  the  say- 
ing, one  must  be  pious  but  not  too  pious,  that  is,  super- 
stitious. The  early  Roman,  too,  was  not  artistic,  a  great  lack 
in  building  up  cults.  He  did  not  even  build  temples  till  the 
Etruscans  taught  him  how.  His  templum  (derived  from 
the  Etruscans)  was  the  sky  as  he  saw  it,  divided  into  regions, 
where  Heaven  might  show  signs,  and  his  first  earthly  temple 
was  merely  a  space  of  earth  marked  out  to  correspond. 
The  song  and  flight  of  birds  were  his  oracles,  voices  of  the 
gods  as  clear  to  him  as  the  obvious  voice  of  Jove  in  thunder. 
Grecian  oracles x  and  lots  were  foreign  devices,  adopted 
later,  and  studying  the  entrails  of  animals  to  learn  the  future 
was  an  ancient  form  of  divination  (haruspicium)  brought  to 
him  by  the  Etruscans  or  Greeks,  to  whom  he  owed  also,  as 
already  remarked,  the  introduction  of  various  other  reli- 
gious novelties.  Yet  these  aspects  must  not  blind  us  to  the 
fact  that  a  grateful  piety  really  expressed  the  religious  atti- 
tude of  Rome,  as  contrasted  with  the  base  fear  of  spirits. 
The  Roman  at  all  times  recognized  a  supreme  directing 
Power,  which  was  a  moral  force  in  his  life  and  in  that  of  the 
State.  He  attributed  to  it  his  own  sturdy  character,  up- 
1  Compare  habitae  Graiis  oracula  quercus,  Ge orgies,  2.  14. 


534  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

holding  truth  and  hard  duties  of  every  sort.  The  Romans 
surpassed  all  nations  in  the  worship  of  gods,  said  Cicero; 
he  meant  that  Roman  religion  produced  a  better  State,  which 
to  a  surprising  extent  had  banished  magical  superstition 
in  favour  of  moral  religious  powers.  And  Cicero  was 
right,  for,  with  the  exception  of  religions  about  which  he 
knew  nothing,  Roman  religion,  though  not  profound,  was 
the  cleanest  and  highest  of  classical  antiquity.1  It  had  no 
such  scandalous  divinities  as  the  best  known  to  Homer.  It 
had  indeed  its  unclean  under-side,  but  in  general  it  was  a 
religious  structure  built  by  earnest  upright  men,  who  had 
made  their  gods  in  their  own  image  and  whose  lack  of 
mythology,  though  it  may  have  been  due  primarily  to  a 
lack  of  imagination,  resulted  also  in  a  safe  lack  of  familiarity 
with  the  gods.  Communal  feasts  with  divinities  played 
little  part  in  Rome,  though  found  in  the  Feriae  Latinae  and 
festivals  like  the  Fornacalia,  a  communal  feast  of  those 
using  the  same  oven.  Sacrifices  generally  were  honorific 
or  piacular.2  Men  did  not  presume  to  know  their  gods; 
often  they  did  not  know  by  name  the  divinity  to  whom  they 
prayed.  Their  relations  with  them  if  stiff  were  dignified. 
Until  the  praetorship  was  established,  in  the  fourth  cen- 
tury B.  c.,  the  Pontifices,  whose  chief  absorbed  the  powers 
of  the  old  Rex  Sacrorum,  were  practically  a  law-court  as 
well  as  a  religious  college  (eventually  of  fifteen  members) 
and  the  Pontifex  Maximus  became  the  judge  and  arbiter  of 

1  Cicero  is  contrasting  it  with  Greek,  Egyptian,  and  Oriental  cults. 

2  The   State-sacrifices  were  either  for  lustration,  that  is  accom- 
panied with  prayer  for  protection,  or  piacular,  that  is  a  gift  as  a 
sin-offering  to  atone  for  some  remissness  in  observing  the  "  sacred 
law."    Vegetables,  beans,  corn,  cakes,  fresh  fruits,  and  animal  sacri- 
fices with  milk,  wine,  and  incense,  were  offered  in  fire  from  the 
first  recorded  times  as  daily  offerings  by  private  individuals;  but 
there  are  indications  that  wine  was  regarded  as  something  new ; 
some    sacrifices    expressly    omit    it.     Of    the    begarlanded    animals 
(sex,  age,  and  colour  were  important),  the  gods  received  the  care- 
fully examined  exta  (heart,  lungs,  liver,  gall)  and  the  priests  con- 
sumed the  viscera.    The  suovetaurilia,  boar,  ram,  and  bull,  was  the 
greatest  sacrifice;  the  boar  or  pig  the  commonest.    The  lower  gods 
received  black,  the  upper  gods,  white  animals. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  535 

all  affairs  divine  and  human.  That  is,  the  activities  of  the 
people  were  directed  by  interpreters  of  the  divine  will,  who 
controlled  their  conduct  in  all  the  acts  of  their  life. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  say  when  the  old  Roman  religion 
began  to  change.  If  we  compare  what  has  been  called  the 
religion  of  Numa  (early  Roman)  with  the  religion  of  the 
third  century  B.  c.,  we  find  it  as  a  civic  phenomenon  greatly 
altered.  Greek  gods  and  Greek  ritual  submerged  what  was 
old  Roman.  But  while  the  time,  even  the  year,  can  be 
stated  in  which  this  or  that  Greek  god  was  introduced,  we 
cannot  tell  how  early  a  more  insidious  intrusion  of  Greek 
ideas  began.  Even  in  the  Lupercalia,  Greek  thought  ap- 
pears to  dominate;  even  in  the  introduction  of  Minerva  as 
one  of  a  triad,  Greek  arrangement  seems  to  lurk ;  and  even 
in  the  country  rites  of  Flora  or  Fauna,  which  elements  came 
from  the  Roman  and  which  from  the  Greek  is  hard  to 
specify. 

Before  speaking  of  those  Greek  gods  and  rites  regarding 
which  there  is  no  question,  we  may  pause  a  moment  to  lay 
more  stress  on  the  importance,  for  the  understanding  of 
Roman  religion  as  a  whole,  of  some  of  the  little  celebra- 
tions, to  which  only  a  passing  allusion  has  been  made.  In 
every  religion  these  seemingly  unimportant  factors  are  apt 
to  be  underestimated.  So  we  tell  of  the  great  gods  of  India 
and  their  ritual  and  flatter  ourselves  that  we  have  described 
the  religion  of  that  land,  while  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  real 
religion  of  an  ordinary  Hindu  was  probably  mainly  con- 
cerned with  spirits  and  beliefs  which  have  left  but  fugitive 
traces  in  the  literature.  Or  in  modern  days  we  may  de- 
scribe the  cult  and  belief  of  the  Church  and  call  it  the  re- 
ligion of  a  Sardinian  peasant,  whose  real  religion  is  scarcely 
touched  by  formal  cult  and  acknowledged  belief.  We  must 
make  allowance  for  this  factor  in  judging  of  Roman  reli- 
gion. Of  course  the  great  gods  and  their  cult  as  prescribed 
were  recognized ;  but  probably  the  Roman's  real  religion  lay 
closer  to  him.  We  have  spoken  of  the  pretty  rite  of  crown- 
ing with  garlands  the  beneficent  fountain  and  offering  a 


536  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

share  of  the  daily  meal  to  the  household  gods.  But  all 
Roman  life  was  full  of  such  artless  devotion  *  though  in 
our  uncertainty  as  to  Greek  influence  spreading  naturally 
north  from  Hellenized  lower  Italy,  we  cannot  say  certainly 
how  the  elements  of  the  simpler  cults  should  be  analysed. 
But,  admitting  the  possibility  of  early  Greek  influence,  it  is 
more  important  for  us  to  realize  what  the  Roman  thought 
and  did  than  to  know  whether  all  he  thought  and  did  was 
his  own  invention. 

The  number  of  rustic  rites,  some  of  which  afterwards 
became  adopted  by  the  city,  is  too  large  to  describe  indi- 
vidually, but  their  import  may  be  seen  in  one  or  two  exam- 
ples. So  the  offerings  and  devotion  paid  to  Mother  Earth 
appear  in  a  simpler  form  addressed  to  Dea  Dia,  the  "  god- 
dess "  par  excellence,  whose  personality  gradually  vanished 
as  it  was  absorbed  into  that  of  the  specific  Earth.  The  god- 
dess Flora  was  worshipped  in  spring,  that  she  might  guard 
the  growing  grain,  though  it  was  not  till  238  B.  c.  that  a 
Roman  temple  was  erected  to  her,  withal  at  the  behest  of 
the  Sibylline  oracle.  The  form  of  worship  was  not  refined. 
Dances  by  naked  women  and  coarse  mimes  celebrated  the 
goddess  of  fecund  nature,  as  was  to  be  expected,  and  Greek 
influence  is  discernible  in  the  State  performance.  But  be 
the  rite  Greek  or  Roman  originally,  it  was  Roman  enough 
by  the  end  of  the  third  century  B.  c.  to  be  regarded  as  an 
exposition  of  Roman  religious  feeling  and  probably  it  was 
not  all  Greek.  Flora  is  Italian,  revered  by  Sabines  and 
Oscans  as  well  as  by  Romans ; 2  her  cult  is  essentially  that 
of  a  Venus,  unrefined,  native.  Another  popular  festi- 

1  Thus  the  rite  in  honour  of  Ceres  described  by  Vergil  has  no 
sinister  union  with  that  of  Tellus,  as  an  underground  divinity,  but 
the  peasants  "  dance  and  sing  to  Ceres,"  make  to  her  offerings  of 
honey,  milk,  and  wine,   and   "  invite  her  into  their  homes,"   as   a 
rustic  goddess  of  the  harvest  (Georgics  I.  347). 

2  Flora  was  worshipped  by  the  Fratres  Arvales  and  had  her  early 
Flamen.     Her  day  was  the  prostitutes'  festival.    The  more  or  less 
obscene    fertility-rite    at   the    shepherds'    feast    Parilia    (April    21) 
with  the  fire-lustration   (above)    belongs  to  this  class  of  religious 
rites.     "  Worship  "  here  is  largely  magic. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  537 

val  was  the  harvest- feast  of  Census,  the  divinity  of  the 
harvested  grain.  First  fruits  were  offered  to  the  god ;  ath- 
letic contests  were  held  by  the  shepherds ;  the  farm  animals, 
allowed  a  day  of  rest,  were  garlanded  with  flowers ;  and 
there  was  a  mule-race.  The  feast  of  Saturnus,  originally 
of  purgative  character,1  was  formally  altered  to  a  Greek 
rite  in  217  B.  c.,  when  Saturnus  was  identified  with  Kronos. 
As  a  last  specimen  of  the  real  religion  of  the  ordinary 
Roman  we  may  consider  the  goddess  Fauna,  Bona  Dea, 
and  her  cult,  which  was  probably  affected  by  Grecian 
worship,  but  by  the  Romans  was  felt  as  quite  indi- 
genous, though  the  form  of  worship  in  the  third  century 
may,  as  has  been  thought,  have  come  from  Tarentum  (272 
B.  c.)-  That  she  was  not  all  Greek,  however,  is  shown  by 
the  fact  that  the  Umbrians  and  Picenti  also  had  a  Cupra, 
or  Good  Goddess,  identical  with  Bona  Dea  Fauna.  In  the 
city  cult  this  local  deity  was  identified  with  the  Greek  Damia 
and  her  rite  was  doubtless  changed  accordingly.  However 
that  may  be,  the  worship  at  Rome  in  the  third  century  was 
a  picturesque  ceremony.  All  night  long  women  sacrificed 
and  danced  in  honour  of  Bona  Dea ;  a  pig  and  wine  satisfied 
her  not ;  she  had  to  have  music  and  the  dance.  She  was 
looked  upon  as  a  healing  power  and  only  women  might  serve 
her;  among  whom,  in  the  city  cult,  were  the  Vestals.  A 
curious  circumstance,  indicating  antiquity,  is  that,  though 
wine  was  used  freely,  it  had  to  be  called  milk,  vinum  lac 
nuncupetur.  Connected  with  her  city  temple  were  the  heal- 
ing serpents  of  Aesculapius  and  she  was  especially  invoked 
by  women  in  sickness ;  but  the  country  cult  shows  no  indi- 
cation of  this  (Greek)  combination.  Her  very  general 
designation  made  it  possible  for  various  local  Good  God- 
desses to  be  identified  with  her.  Another  country  goddess 
was  Venus  or  Frutis,  the  goddess  of  garden  and  vineyard, 

1  Human  sacrifice  may  have  taken  place  at  this  rite,  when  the 
ills  of  the  year  were  disposed  of  through  a  scape-goat.  Reaction 
from  apprehension  of  accumulated  evil  is  always  expressed  by 
"  saturnalian  "  abandon,  though  primitive  people  require  little  excuse 
for  laxity. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

who  was  brought  from  Ardea  and  had  a  Roman  temple  as 
early  as  295  B.  c.  She  was  later  (287  B.  c.)  identified  with 
Aphrodite  of  Eryx  and  her  worship  was  set  for  August  17, 
her  formal  day.  Later,  under  the  designation  felix,  she 
was  regarded  as  Fortuna ;  but  her  original  Roman  role  was 
that  of  a  fruit-goddess  rather  than  goddess  of  general 
fruitfulness  and  fortune. 

Other  divinities  played  in  the  religious  consciousness  of 
Latium  and  Rome  a  part  not  to  be  overlooked,  Volturnus  or 
Tiberinus  Pater,  the  "  rolling  "  river  and  Volcanus,  to  whom 
were  made  many  shrines  and  offerings,  for,  as  has  been  said, 
he  was  destructive  Fire  (afterwards  Hephaestus  as  god  of 
smiths)  and  received  such  fearful  worship  as  was  given  to 
pests.  Maia  or  Maiestas  was  his  "  wife,"  as  Moles  is  wife 
of  Mars,  his  power.  Furthermore,  many  gods  or  spirits 
are  known,  whose  fanes  remained  much  longer  than  their 
divinity  and  whose  names  even  are  sometimes  in  doubt. 
Such  were  the  goddesses  of  birth,  either  of  the  year,  when 
the  Divalia  honoured  Diva  Angerona,  or  of  birth  and  death 
of  man,  Mana  ;  deities  corresponding  to  the  phallus,  Mutunus 
and  Tutunus ;  or  again  the  Dea  Febris  or  spirit  of  disease, 
more  particularly  Tertiana  and  Quartana,  the  personifica- 
tion of  the  third  and  fourth  fever  days  (malaria),  and 
Mefitis,  the  power  seen  in  mephitic  exaltations,  who  had  a 
grove  and  temple. 

Tarquin  the  Proud,  according  to  tradition,  dickered  with 
the  Sibyl;  an  Apollo  oracle  at  Cumae,  till  he  came  into  pos- 
session of  the  oracles  called  Sibyllina  Remedia.  They  were 
acrostics,  not  intended  to  give  oracles  in  regard  to  the  future 
but  to  explain  what  remedies  should  be  applied  in  case  the 
State  was  in  danger.  They  were  kept  at  Rome  but  never 
used  except  by  permission  of  the  Senate.  Soon  after  Tar- 
quin's  death  a  famine  at  Rome  suggested  a  consultation  of 
this  Sibylline  wisdom  and  in  consequence  was  introduced, 
for  the  first  time  formally,  the  worship  of  Greek  gods, 
Apollo,  Leto,  and  Artemis  leading  the  way,  followed  by 
Demeter,  Dionysus,  and  Kore.  Probably  Apollo  was  intro- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  539 

duced  as  healer  and  Demeter  (496  B.  c.)  as  grain-goddess. 
As  healer,  Apollo  was  called  Medicus  and  a  temple  was  built 
for  him  in  423  B.  c.  Hercules,  also  as  a  healer,  was  brought 
into  Rome  in  the  same  way  in  399  B.  c. ;  later,  his  image  was 
exhibited  in  the  first  recorded  lectisternium  or  procession  of 
gods  reclining  on  couches  in  pairs.  But  in  general  not  much 
addition  of  this  sort  was  made  to  the  pantheon  through  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  though  Aesculapius  was  called  in 
to  heal  another  pest,  and  in  this  case  the  Romans  sent  an 
embassy  to  Epidaurus  to  get  him  (in  the  form  of  a  snake) 
in  293  B.C.,  as  later  Hygeia  (Salus)  came  in  at  command 
of  the  Sibyl  in  180  B.  c.  Again,  in  249  B.  c.,  Dispater  and 
Proserpina  appeared,  in  Latinized  forms  of  Pluton  and 
Persephone,  to  still  the  fear  of  an  ominous  lightning-stroke 
and  of  war.  Then,  in  205  B.  c.,  the  Sibyl  recommended  the 
introduction  of  Magna  Mater,  that  is,  the  Phrygian  Cybele 
with  her  cult  of  the  Asiatic  goddess  and  her  maimed  lover 
Attis,  who  was  subsequently  associated  with  Tanith,  the 
Carthaginian  Dea  Caelestis.  Meantime  the  Sibyl  had  also 
managed  to  bring  in  the  cult  of  Venus  Erycina  and  of  Bona 
Mens  (Sophrosyne),  to  offset  military  disasters  in  217  B.  c. 
To  anticipate,  Sulla  on  his  own  account  brought  in  a  com- 
panion goddess  to  the  Magna  Mater  deum  Idaea  when  he 
brought  back  from  his  campaign  in  Asia  Minor  the  cult  of 
Ma  (as  Bellona),  whose  wild  priests  were  called  Fanatici,  a 
term  applied  as  well  to  the  priests  of  Isis.  She  also  was 
adopted  by  Sulla,  but  was  looked  on  with  suspicion  till  after 
the  Christian  era,  when  a  temple  was  built  for  her  at  Rome.1 
The  long  list  of  the  Greek  and  Oriental  deities  flooding 
Rome  from  the  third  century  includes  also  the  Dea  Syria 
or  Suria,  a  form  of  Atargatis  (and  Hadad),  and  other 
forms  of  Sol  Invictus.  Sol  was  no  old  Roman  god  (he 
had  a  temple  on  the  Aventine  in  182  B.  c.),  though  he  was 
worshipped  by  agriculturists;  but  as  a  foreign  deity  he 

1  Isis  first  had  temples  at  Puteoli  (c.  100  B.  c.)  and  Pompeii.  At 
Puteoli  there  was  also  a  later  Syrian  congregation  who  worshipped 
"Jupiter  of  Beyrout,"  that  is  Baal  of  Heliopolis  (c.  100  A.  D.). 


540  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

played  a  great  part,  especially  when  identified  with  Mithra, 
and  even  before  this,  when  the  mad  emperor  Elagabal  made 
all  Rome  worship  his  black  stone  for  three  years.  The  em- 
peror Anrelian  built  a  temple  to  Sol  (274  A.  D.)  and  gave 
him  a  Roman  college.  Trade  and  the  foreign  legions  also 
brought  into  Rome  numerous  Asiatic  gods  whose  worship- 
pers were  foreign  soldiers  and  traders.  These  gods  were 
called  Jupiters  with  their  qualifying  local  title,  such  as  Jupi- 
ter Dolichenus  (from  Doliche  in  Syria),  or  Jupiter  Da- 
mascenus,  i.e.,  the  god  of  Damascus  worshipped  as  Jupiter. 
Mithra  himself,  well  known  to  Plutarch,  was  patronized 
by  Commodus  with  Isis  in  the  third  century  A.  D.  In  the 
second  century  A.  D.,  Jupiter  Sabazios,  of  Phrygia,  was 
confused  with  Sabaoth  and  was  thought  to  be  the  Jewish 
god. 

This  deluge  of  gods  did  not  destroy  the  Roman  State-cult, 
but  it  destroyed  the  simplicity  of  the  old  Roman  religion, 
first  by  bringing  in  new  gods  thinly  disguised  under  Roman 
names,  then  by  lowering  the  idea  of  divinity,  through  exhibit- 
ing Greek  idols  as  gods  in  human  form  in  temples  and  in  the 
lectisternium,  and  thirdly  by  introducing  not  only  the 
Graecus  ritus  but  all  the  strange  ideas  underlying  the  cult 
of  Dionysus,  Demeter,  and  other  mystic  gods.  Now  for  the 
first  time  were  the  Romans  taught  ecstatic  communion  with 
deity,  and  were  vexed  with  problems  of  the  life  hereafter.1 
Now  first  they  set  out  an  epulum  Jovis  as  part  of  the  Ludi 
Romani  and  exhibited  twelve  gods  in  pairs  in  a  lectisternium 
(217  B.C.).  Now  first  they  had  new  forms  of  Supplica- 
tiones,  as  ordered  by  the  Sibyl,  in  processions  of  girls  (ad 
omnia  pulvinaria),  who  visited  the  couches  of  all  the  gods. 
In  207  B.  c.,  the  Decemviri  headed  a  procession  of  maidens 
who  went  about  singing  choric  songs  to  Juno  and  dancing, 

1  In  249  B.  c.,  the  Etruscans  introduced  the  Ludi  Saeculares  or 
Tarentini  with  the^cult  of  chthonic  divinities  and  the  more  sombre 
tone  associated  with  this  cult.  The  mystery  of  religion  in  the 
Greek  sense  had  not  till  then  been  operative.  The  first  deities  in- 
troduced were  mainly  for  healing  purposes,  like  Apollo  himself,  but 
even  he  was  identified  with  Vediovis,  the  underground  (volcanic) 
form  of  Jupiter. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  54^ 

as  they  hung  on  to  a  connecting  rope.  This  exhibition  was 
nothing  in  the  world  but  a  Greek  Panathenaea  projected 
upon  wondering  Rome  by  the  Greek  Sibyl  to  offset  a  strange 
prodigy.  One  other  important  object  was  attained  through 
the  new  rites.  They  popularized  religion,  the  cults  being 
such  that  all  citizens  might  share  in  them.  To  the  Romans 
the  new  religion  also  made  an  aesthetic  appeal  comparable 
to  the  effect  produced  on  plain  people  by  gorgeous  pageantry. 
Pestilence  and  the  fear  of  Hannibal  were  the  chief  rea- 
sons leading  to  this  Hellenizing  of  Rome.  But  more  influ- 
ential than  Grecian  cults  were  the  Oriental  religions  im- 
ported into  Rome.  At  first,  the  Megalesia  rites  of  Magna 
Mater  and  her  followers  opened  wide  the  door  to  every  form 
of  religious  orgy.  From  the  time  when  Rome  gave  herself 
to  these  cults,  the  old  Roman  religion  existed  only  as  a  sub- 
ordinate survival.  The  real  religion  of  Rome  was  now 
built  on  debased  Greek  *  and  Oriental  superstition  and  mys- 
ticism, to  which  was  added  Greek  philosophy.  For  with 
the  Greek  gods  came  to  Italy  Greek  metaphysics.  Euhem- 
erus  and  his  interpretation  of  gods  as  merely  men  became 
familiar  through  the  works  of  Ennius  (200  B.  c.).  In  vain 
old  Cato  sought  to  revive  the  ancient  superstitions  and 
rustic  religious  formulas.  Ennius  himself  said  that,  though 
divinities  existed,  they  cared  not  for  men.  Varro,  in  the 
first  century  B.  c.,  tried  to  save  the  life  of  the  deities  by  in- 
terpreting them  allegorically,2  but  neither  Epicurean  nor 
Stoic  philosophy  could  restore  the  dying  gods  of  Rome, 
which  had  converted  even  its  Jupiter  into  a  political  rather 
than  a  religious  aegis  and  now  supported  its  old  State-ritual 
merely  as  part  of  the  administrative  machine.  Plautus 

1  It  must  be   remembered  that   the   Greek   religion   absorbed   by 
Rome  was  mainly  that  of  c.  200,  when  it  was  far  removed  from  its 
original  form.    When,  for  example,  the  Romans  received  the  cult 
of  Egyptian  Isis  they  took  it  from  Delos,  where  Isis  had  been  wor- 
shipped as  early  as  300  B.  c. 

2  The  allegorical  interpretation  of  gods  was  familiar  to  the  Greeks. 
Theagenes  of  Rhegium,  five  hundred  years  before  Christ,  said  that 
Homer's    gods    expressed    faculties    or    natural    elements.     Vergil 
(after  Chrysippus)   calls  Aether  the  omnipotent  father. 


542  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

(254-184  B.  c.)  publicly  ridiculed  the  genealogies  of  the 
gods  and  in  the  same  era  Cato  already  dared  to  express 
wonder  that  one  augur  could  meet  another  without  laugh- 
ing. Religion,  in  its  received  form  at  least,  was  regarded 
as  hypocrisy  or  as  a  legitimate  pretence,  to  disguise  from 
the  common  people  the  truth  they  were  intellectually  in- 
capable of  receiving. 

By  the  time  of  Lucretius  (98-55  B.  c.),  all  the  gods  had 
become  mere  figures  of  speech  to  the  learned.  Venus  to 
Lucretius  was  neither  the  genuine  Italian  god  of  gardens 
and  vineyards  nor  the  Aphrodite  with  whom  she  had  become 
officially  identified,  but  a  cosmic  power.  His  great  poem 
De  Rerum  Natura  was  essentially  atheistic;  his  endeavour 
was  not  to  uphold  religion  but  to  crush  superstition.  Along- 
side of  this  Epicurean  heterodoxy,  which,  expelled  from  the 
State  in  a  short-lived  spasm  of  orthodoxy  in  173  B.  c.,  had 
returned  again,  there  flourished  also  the  mysticism  and  cre- 
dulity which  passed  under  the  name  of  Pythagoras,  whose 
system  had  been  foisted  upon  the  state  by  forged  documents 
in  181  B.  c.  and  had  been  officially  rejected,  but  among 
the  people  had  made  great  progress  by  its  appeal  to  the 
unknown  and  its  tempting  doctrine  of  metempsychosis. 
Yet  no  Greek  philosophy  had  so  great  and  lasting  an  effect 
at  Rome  as  that  of  the  Stoics.  Epicureanism,  while  it  elimi- 
nated emotion  as  contrary  to  reason,  also  eliminated  the  ob- 
ject of  emotion,  the  gods.  Pythagoreanism,  in  the  form 
brought  into  Rome  from  south  Italy,  appeared  only  as  a 
maze  of  unfounded  speculation  too  mystic  for  the  hard- 
headed  Roman  to  assimilate.  On  the  other  hand,  Stoicism, 
which  itself  had  absorbed  what  was  best  from  the  Academy, 
appealed  to  the  Roman  because  it  laid  great  weight  on  moral 
virtues  under  the  allegorical  interpretation  of  gods  as  ethical 
powers.  As  early  as  140  B.  c.,  Panaetius  of  Rhodes  had 
taught  Scipio  and  his  intimates  the  principles  of  the  Stoics, 
that  the  universe  is  the  orderly  product  of  mind  inherent  in 
matter,  that  what  we  call  God  is  within  all  forces,  as  the 
sum  of  existence ;  Jupiter  exists  as  reason  in  a  material  uni- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  543 

verse,  which  reason  man  alone  shares,  and  man  may  realize 
himself  in  communion  with  this  sum  of  existence  called 
God ;  when  he  does  so,  he  perceives  that  man's  law  is  but  a 
form  of  God's  law. 

No  doctrine  could  please  a  high-minded  Roman,  naturally 
law-abiding  and  morally  inclined,  better  than  the  material- 
ism thus  subtly  disguised  as  religious  philosophy.  From 
about  200  B.  c.  to  200  A.  D.  it  may  be  said  to  be  the  Roman 
philosophy  par  excellence.  Cicero  adopted  Panaetius  as  his 
own  and  edited  him  under  the  form  of  (the  first)  two  books 
entitled  De  Officiis.1  At  the  same  time  the  Oriental  religions 
tended  to  inculcate  a  popular  polytheism  in  which  all  gods 
represented  one  (pantheistic)  principle. 

But  the  philosophers  of  Rome,  at  whose  hands  religion 
was  reduced  to  speculative  morality,  represented  only  a 
class.  Had  her  practical  statesmen  remained  religious  in 
the  old  sense,  there  would  still  have  been  a  large  body  of 
influential  men  whose  beliefs  would  have  been  felt  as  a  re- 
ligious force  by  the  people.  But  this  was  not  the  case.  On 
the  contrary,  the  practical  statesmen  converted  the  priestly 
colleges  into  political  clubs.  Sulla  made  himself  master  of 
Rome  through  using  these  colleges  as  part  of  his  political 
machine.  He  could  do  this  very  easily,  as  most  priests  might 
hold  public  office  and  the  priests  as  a  class  had  complete  con- 
trol of  the  State.  They  put  the  ban  of  religion  on  what  they 
disliked  and  oracularly  proclaimed  their  own  desires  as  the 
wishes  of  the  gods ;  they  could  declare  war  and  prevent  it ; 
they  could  elect  and  reject  as  they  would ;  there  was  always 
a  prodigy  or  augury  at  command.  All  the  members  of  the 
Pontifici  and  Augures  were  put  in  office  as  political  tools 
of  the  demagogue,  who  was  himself  the  head  of  Rome's  re- 
ligious world.  There  was  no  further  need  of  "  Sibylline 
Books  "  to  debauch  Roman  religion  when  once  Sulla  had 
determined  to  become  dictator.2 

1  Ambrose  later  based  his  De  Officiis  on  this  model. 

2  The  year  before  this  happened  the  Sibylline  books  were  destroyed 
by  fire,  when  the  Capitol  where  they  were  kept  was  burned  (83  B.  C.). 
The  later  "Sibylline"  texts  included  even  Jewish  writings. 


544  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

There  has  been  space  here  only  to  show  the  general  result 
of  importing  foreign  gods  into  Rome.  Roman  religion  dif- 
fers from  the  religion  of  Rome.  The  latter  still  retained 
the  old  forms,  as  it  retained  largely  the  old  names  of  gods. 
But  the  Roman  gods  for  the'most  part  vanished  under  Greek 
names.  On  the  other  hand,  Roman  religion  did  not  vanish 
in  form  but  changed  in  spirit.  For,  despite  the  atheism  of 
philosophy  and  the  hypocrisy  of  politicians,  there  was  of 
course  a  mass  of  people  neither  philosophers  nor  politicians 
who  believed  and  felt  something,  not  only  during  the  hys- 
teria of  the  Punic  wars  and  the  machinations  of  the  civil 
disorders  but  after  excitement  was  quelled  and  life  had 
resumed  its  usual  course.  We  may  perhaps  envisage  this 
popular  religion  best  in  two  phases,  before  Hannibal  and 
after  Sulla. 

The  first  intrusion  of  Greek  gods  had  no  great  effect; 
they  did  not  come  into  the  country  in  large  numbers  till 
Hannibal  frightened  the  people  into  groping  for  new  forms 
of  divine  assistance.  Up  till  then  we  may  say  that  religion 
was  chiefly  a  matter  of  form  rigidly  adhered  to  on  the  lines 
of  a  legal  contract  between  men  and  gods,  though  the  deities 
were  thought  of  as  kindly  protective  spirits  and  there  was 
not  lacking  a  respondent  human  sentiment  of  cheerful  grati- 
tude. But  Greek  religion  not  only  changed  the  conception 
of  deities  and  made  them  much  more  human  in  figure;  it 
affected  too  the  conception  of  the  relation  of  man  to  divinity. 
We  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  Greek  mysteries  and  orgies 
together  and  it  is  true  that  the  orgiastic  side  of  Dionysos 
worship,  especially  when  reinforced  by  the  grosser  Oriental 
cults,  did  much  to  affect  unfavourably  the  purer  religious 
morality  approved  by  the  Roman  State.  But  at  the  same 
time  the  mystery,  which  was  not  necessarily  orgiastic  in 
expression,  introduced  an  entirely  new  idea,  that  of  a  life 
purified  within,  rather  than  without,  and  devoted  to  a  god 
with  whom  man  might  abide  in  communion  all  his  life  if 
he  would,  and  with  whom  he  might  be  united  after  death. 
This  was,  in  sum,  the  one  tremendous  change  introduced 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  545 

by  foreign  cults  at  Rome.  How  large  a  circle  it  affected 
we  cannot  know,  but  it  was  an  entirely  new  presentation 
of  religion  and,  so  to  speak,  it  accorded  religiously  with  what 
had  been  taught  philosophically  by  the  Stoics,  so  that  emo- 
tion and  intelligence  met  in  a  new  sphere  of  thought  destined 
as  it  chanced  to  have  much  influence  on  the  religion  of  the 
future.  Another  element  also  is  to  be  noticed  in  the  new 
religion  of  Rome.  It  is  logically  to  be  obtained  both  from 
the  philosophy  of  the  Stoics  and  from  that  church-idea 
which  enveloped  the  brothers  of  the  mystery.  For  when 
religion  became  personal  instead  of  political  and  the  wor- 
shippers felt  themselves  bound  together  not  as  a  clan  or 
town  but  as  companions  in  a  service  to  a  god,  there  was 
bound  to  arise  a  new  idea  of  kinship,  a  spiritual  brother- 
hood quite  different  from  the  Fratres  of  the  collegia.  This 
in  turn  led,  or  might  easily  lead,  to  a  feeling  of  human 
brotherhood,  a  note  not  altogether  rare  in  antiquity  but  lead- 
ing further  to  the  feeling  of  appreciation  for  all  animal  life 
and  perhaps  to  the  gentle  spirit  nowhere  so  perceptible  as  in 
the  verse  of  Vergil.1  Thus  a  kindly  sympathy  was  added  to 
the  religion  of  hope  and  to  the  spiritual  conception  of  man 
accented  by  the  mystery-religion.  These  new  elements, 
united  with  that  ingrained  sense  of  duty  which  was  natively 
Roman  and  that  love  of  order  and  dignity  which  exhibits 
itself  in  the  Roman  ritual,  all  combined  to  prepare  the  world 
for  a  religion  in  which  every  one  of  these  elements  is  promi- 
nent, so  prominent  in  fact  that  it  was  easy  to  turn  the  stately 
Roman  lust-ratio  into  the  lustration-ceremony  of  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  Church,  to  substitute  for  observance  of  the 
dead  the  kindly  prayers  for  the  dead,  to  convert  local  deities 
into  saints,  and  adopt  bodily  such  ritual  practices  as  the 

1  Vergil,  perhaps  influenced  by  Augustus,  still  clings  to  the  genuine 
Roman  gods  in  his  poetic  lectures  on  farming.  Ceres,  Pales,  Sil- 
vanus,  Vesta  (who  guards  the  Tibur),  and  Saturnus  are  recognized 
by  him  as  deities  to  be  worshipped  by  the  farmer  and  shepherd,  as 
well  as  rain-giving  Jupiter,  though  he  also  favours  the  cult  of 
Bacchus  and  other  Greek  gods.  To  Mars  he  alludes  only  as  the 
"  impious  "  god  who  destroys  the  farmer's  peace. 


546  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

use  of  acolytes,  of  incense  and  holy  water,  and  the  reverent 
remembrance  still  potent  on  December  25th. 

With  the  fall  of  the  Republic,  religion,  while  it  still 
reached  after  new  cults,  reverted  also  to  old  forms.  One 
movement,  however,  was  untrammelled,  the  other  was  dic- 
tated by  authority.  Augustus,  namely,  having  converted 
a  rotten  republic  into  a  precarious  empire,  sought  to  guide 
his  people  into  safe  pastures,  where  peace  and  prosperity 
would  appear  as  imperial  trapping.  We  need  not  inquire 
how  religious  was  the  emperor  whose  scepticism  is  as  well 
known  as  his  piety.  It  was  his  to  bring  back  a  people,  long 
harassed  by  internal  dissensions,  to  quiet  stability  and  to 
impress  upon  them  the  right  of  Augustus  of  the  gens  Julia 
so  to  do.  He  set  up  his  own  Genius  to  be  worshipped  beside 
the  Lares  of  every  city  vicus;  he  practically  invented  Julius 
as  his  family  god ;  he  made  the  world  acknowledge  Augustus 
to  be  a  divinity.  At  the  same  time,  he  urged  a  return  to 
old  simplicity  and  country  life  and  withal  to  old  religious 
ideas,  rebuilding  the  temples  of  moribund  gods  and  reviv- 
ing the  old  religious  machinery,  such  as  the  ceremony  per- 
formed by  the  Fratres  Arvales.  He  himself  became  Ponti- 
fex  Maximus  (12  B.C.)  and  took  charge  therewith  of  the 
cult  of  Vesta ;  but  made  it  a  cult  of  his  own  Vesta  or  house 
(as  Vesta  Augusta).  Of  the  Greek  gods,  he  made  most  of 
Apollo,  because  this  divinity  had  saved  him  at  Actium,  and 
Mars  he  worshipped,  but  as  Ultor,  because  this  divinity  had 
avenged  Augustus ;  while  he  built  quite  new  temples  to  these 
gods  and  also  to  Venus  as  mother  of  Augustus'  family.  He 
encouraged  the  Mantuan  poet  to  turn  the  people  from  poli- 
tics to  agriculture  with  the  Georgics  *  and  with  the  Aeneid 
to  imbue  them  with  the  Venus-Augustus  legend  of  an  en> 
pire  fashioned  in  heaven  and  brought  to  earth  by  the  divine 
man,  with  whom  the  regenerated  world  should  be  born  anew  ; 

1  Vergil  admits  the  divinity  of  Augustus  in  the  Eclogues,  deus 
nobis  haec  otia  fecit.  In  the  first  three  centuries  of  our  era  this 
"  Roman  peace "  was  an  important  factor  in  the  growth  of  Chris- 
tianity, as  it  produced  a  cosmopolitan  equality  which  levelled  old 
class  and  race  distinctions. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  547 

for  which  purpose  he  dictated  to  another  poet  the  substance 
of  the  Carmen  Saeculare  (17  B.C.).  Ovid,  to  please  him- 
self, made  the  gods  ridiculous  and,  to  please  the  emperor, 
wrote  the  Fasti.  The  evil  Augustus  did  lived  after  him. 
Human  gods  continued  to  be  made  of  dead  and  living  em- 
perors, who  sometimes  also  deified  their  women  and  even 
their  favourites  (Hadrian  thus  deified  the  youth  Antinous), 
till  there  were  nearly  forty  of  these  monstrous  gods  besides 
the  bizarre  Jupiters  that  streamed  into  the  city  from  every 
point  in  the  Orient,  who  were  really  not  Jupiters  at  all  but 
local  Oriental  gods  worshipped  by  the  various  soldiers  and 
merchants  quartered  at  Rome.  The  objections  felt  against 
the  Bacchus-worshippers,  which  had  led  to  a  decree  against 
them  in  186  B.  c.,  and  against  the  Chaldaeans,  a  general  name 
for  Oriental  astrologers,  which  had  led  to  their  being  ex- 
pelled from  Italy  in  139  B.  c.,  had  given  place  to  enthusiastic 
welcome,  so  that  Caesar  himself  restored  the  Bacchic  cult, 
withal  mixed  with  Oriental  excess.  Thus,  even  when  no 
welcome  was  extended,  no  further  objection  was  felt  to  for- 
eign cults,  which  remained  unmolested,  provided  the  liberal- 
ity which  permitted  their  worshippers  to  practise  their  own 
religion  was  met  with  a  spirit  liberal  enough  to  worship  also 
the  god  of  Rome.  It  was  a  surprise  to  the  Romans  to  find 
that  Christians  would  not  do  this,  as  it  was  a  shock  to  Au- 
gustus to  find  that  his  godhead,  recognized  by  all  the  world 
besides,  was  not  accepted  by  the  Druids  and  the  Jews. 

The  Roman  world  at  this  time  was  in  sympathy  with  a 
belief  in  one  divine  power,  a  God  who  embraced  in  himself 
numerous  forms  of  different  gods ;  but  the  Christian  mono- 
theistic idea  excluded  all  gods  save  one,  which  proved  a 
stumbling-block  to  polytheist  and  pantheist. 

All  through  the  time  of  the  early  emperors,  however, 
despite  the  overwhelming  sea  of  new  cults,  the  old  rites 
remained  in  force,  till  Theodosius  in  the  fourth  century  put 
an  end  to  the  private  worship  of  the  Lares,  Penates,  and 
Genius.  There  were  occasional  outbreaks  of  zeal  against 
Christians,  who  were  persecuted  by  the  mad  boy  Nero 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

(54-68  A.  D.),  and  philosophers,  who  were  banished  from 
Rome  by  Domitian  (81-96  A.  D.)  ;  but  these  were  personal 
sporadic  whimsies.  M.  Aurelius  (161-180  A.  D.)  reinstated 
philosophy,  which  even  under  Nero  was  embodied  in  such 
teachers  as  Seneca  and  Epictetus.  In  this  era  too  the  peri- 
patetic philosopher  became  a  sort  of  household  priest  and 
comforter,  in  whose  conversation  and  precepts  the  living 
found  relief  and  the  dying  hope.  Philosophers  wandered 
about  as  lecturers  and  preachers,  like  the  beggar  monks  of 
India  and  the  Capuchins,  among  whom  of  course  there  were 
charlatans  justifying  satirical  attacks.  To  these  philoso- 
phers, however,  religion  was  not  so  much  a  matter  of  meta- 
physics as  of  practical  ethics.  Closet  philosophers,  too, 
taught  that  man  should  be  sacred  to  man  and  an  object  of 
pity  and  love,  so  that  it  has  become  a  question  whether 
Seneca  was  not  really  influenced  by  Christian  belief,  as  the 
circumstances  of  his  life  made  quite  possible.2 

Plutarch  in  the  second  century 1  discussed  the  relation  of 
man  to  God  like  a  Christian  theologian.  In  the  next  cen- 
tury, the  cult  of  Mithra  almost  submerged  Christianity.  As 
Sol  Invictus  his  festival  led  to  the  Christian  celebration  of 
Christmas  on  December  25,  while  Mithra^- worship  itself  was 
a  quasi  monotheism  with  rites  closely  resembling  those  of 
the  Christian  church.  As  a  popular  Roman  religion  it  be- 
came in  fact  the  forerunner  of  Christianity,  which  later  in 

1  St.  Paul  was  tried  before  his  brother ;  but  many  scholars  oppose 
the   idea  that  this   "heathen   Christian"   was   really  influenced  by 
Christian  thought. 

2  Plutarch   (50-125  A.  D.)    is  an  instructive  example  of  the  union 
of  high  and  low  in  the  religious  atmosphere  of  this  period.    While 
an  eminent  theologian,  teaching  "  not  different  gods  but  one  divine 
Reason,  Providence,"  he  believed  in  dreams,  oracles,  and  such  mani- 
festations of  the  divine  will,  as  strongly  as  any  old  peasant.     Prob- 
ably superstitions  lasted  longer  than  religion  with  many  Romans. 
Pliny  says  that  most  Romans  including  himself  repeated  charms  and 
spells  to  protect  themselves  against  accidents.     It  is  doubtful  whether 
Vergil  really  believed  in  the  Stoic  Divine  Mind.    He  says :     "  Some 
say  that  there  is  part  of  a  divine  mind  even  in  bees,  and  there  is 
no  place  for  death,"  viva  volare  omnia,  but  this  is  what  quidam 
dixere  (Georgics,  4,  22of.). 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  549 

turn  became  the  religion  of  Rome.  It  emphasized  morality 
and  made  every  man  a  soldier  of  a  church  militant.  It  ab- 
sorbed sun-worship,  otherwise  recognized  (when  Elagabalus 
brought  to  Rome  the  black  stone  symbol  of  his  sun-god  at 
Emesa),  but  made  the  sun  merely  a  symbol  of  divinity;  it 
adapted  the  already  popular  worship  of  Fortuna  to  its  own 
ends,  and  even  made  the  State-religion  a  matter  of  concern 
to  women  by  combining  with  itself  the  cult  of  the  originally 
licentious  Mother-goddess,  although  it  appealed  at  the  same 
time  to  those  who  demanded  ethical  purity  as  a  condition 
of  membership  in  its  secret  organization.1  It  was  at  once 
a  religion,  a  philosophy,  a  school  of  morality,  and  a  secret 
society,  and  many  of  its  elements  remained  permanent  fac- 
tors of  Roman  religion  even  after  the  downfall  of  Mithra- 
ism  itself.  In  this  syncretism  of  all  religions  at  Rome  it  is 
not  strange  that  the  new  religion  of  the  Christians  was  rec- 
ognized officially.  The  pious  cousin  of  Elagabalus,  Alex- 
ander Severus  (d.  235  A.  D.),  who  conciliated  all  religious 
parties  and  revered  all  gods,  built  a  temple  to  Isis  and  wished 
to  build  one  to  Christ,  but  the  auspices  prevented  him  from 
accomplishing  this  intention.  His  own  private  religion  ap- 
pears to  have  consisted  in  the  worship  of  his  own  ancestors 
and  of  the  great  benefactors  of  man,  some  of  lower  order 
such  as  Vergil  and  Cicero,  others  of  higher  rank,  among 
whom  were  Alexander  the  Great,  Abraham,  Orpheus,  and 
Jesus  Christ.  Here,  truly,  may  be  said  to  end  all  Roman 
religion,  though  Severus'  attitude  differed  less  in  spirit  than 
in  form  from  the  worship  of  the  Manes  and  the  Lares, 
the  kind  ghosts  and  helpful  spirits  of  Rome's  early  regard.2 

1  This  seeming  paradox  is  solved  by  the  fact  that  the  orgiastic 
religions  of  the  East  fell  on  unfruitful  soil  in  Rome  as  far  as  their 
native  erotic  character  was  concerned.    Thus  Oriental  cults  gradu- 
ally adopted    Roman   morality,   and   were   influential   mainly   as   a 
spiritualizing   force   in   pantheistic    form.     Isis,    c.    150   A.  D.,   is   the 
divine  power  in  the  world,  called  the  Mother  Goddess,  Venus,  Juno, 
etc.,  pure  divinity.     So  too  the  Mother-cult  was  concentrated  on  the 
idea  of  resurrecton  (symbolized  in  the  Hilaria  of  March  25th). 

2  Later  emperors,  however,  like  Diocletian,  persecuted  the  Chris- 


550  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

There  was  only  one  step  further  to  go  and  that  was  taken 
by  Constantine,  when  he  not  only  admitted  Christianity  as 
a  Roman  religion  but  gradually  gave  it  his  preference  among 
the  confused  cults  of  the  Roman  empire.  In  the  years  361- 
363  A.  D.  Julian  the  Apostate  reverted  to  the  doctrines  of 
ancient  days  and  built  temples  to  the  old  gods,  who  were, 
however,  already  dead ;  but  in  392  Theodosius  put  a  formal 
end  to  all  pagan  cults. 

But  though  therewith  the  cults  of  Rome  were  banished, 
Roman  religion  persisted ;  first,  in  its  lower  forms  as  super- 
stitions still  potent  in  their  native  habitatrtrrtfugh  perhaps 
these  may  be  said  to  be  universal  rather  than  Roman.  But 
at  any  rate  they  were  preserved,  from  a  primitive  Italian 
origin,  after  passing  through  the  Roman  mind.  Then,  in  the 
forms  of  those  remote  analogous  gods  who  through  Roman 
military  influence  had  been  identified  with  Roman  originals, 
fugitive  forms,  which  exist  only  as  echoes,  like  the  Hercules 
Magusanus  of  the  Batavians.  Thirdly,  in  the  saints,  as 
well  as  in  the  ritual  observances  already  referred  to  as  in- 
herited by  the  Christian  Church,1  and  above  all  in  the  Roman 
realistic  religious  spirit,  which  appears  in  the  early  Roman 
Church  fathers,  whose  systematizing  tendency  conceived  of 
religion  ethically  and  legally  rather  than  metaphysically  and 
idealistically.  So,  although  what  has  been  said  by  an  emi- 
nent scholar  seems  to  be  true,  namely,  that  the  Romans  if 
well-advised  would  have  feared  the  Greeks  bearing  gifts  and 
that,  after  they  had  renounced  their  gods,  they  won  the 
whole  world  but  lost  their  own  soul,  yet  in  very  truth  the 
spirit  of  Roman  religion  was  not  wholly  lost  nor  was  the 
gift  of  the  Greeks  wholly  destructive.  What  was  finest  in 
the  Greek  religion  as  in  that  of  the  Orientals  entered  into 
Rome,  which,  however,  still  preserved  its  own  indomitable 

tians  generally^  as  they  had  been  persecuted  sporadically  by  Nero 
(see  under  Christianity). 

1  Some  Roman  and  Greek  deities  have  become  saints.  Venus  is 
a  Sicilian  saint  dancing  before  the  Lord!  Augustine  tells  us  that 
memorial  services  in  honor  of  the  martyrs  virtually  relapsed  into 
heathen  worship. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  ROMANS  55 l 

spirit,  the  spirit  of  St.  Augustine,  to  whom  religion  was 
primarily  law,  though  tempered  with  mystic  emotion. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

H.  R.  Hall,  Aegean  Archaeology,  New  York,  1914. 

W.  W.  Fowler,  The  Religious  Experience  of  the  Roman  People, 
London,  1911;  The  Roman  Festivals  of  the  Period  of  the 
Republic,  London,  1899. 

Georg  Wissowa,  Religion  und  Kultus  der  Rdmer,  Munich,  1912. 

J.  B.  Carter,  The  Religion  of  Numa,  London,  1906. 

Gaston  Boissier,  La  fin  du  paganisme,  Paris,  6th  ed.,  1909. 

A.  Bouche-Leclercq,  Histoire  de  la  divination  dans  I'antiquite, 
Paris,  1879-1882. 

Gilbert  Murray,  The  Stoic  Philosophy^  New  York,  1915. 

F.  Cumont,  The  Oriental  Religions  in  Roman  Paganism,  Chi- 
cago, 1911 ;  Astrology  and  Religion  Among  the  Greeks  and 
Romans,  New  York,  1912. 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-FOUR 

THE   RELIGION   OF   CHRIST   AND   CHRISTIANITY 

THE  religion  of  Christ  stands  to  Christianity  somewhat  as 
that  of  Buddha  to  Buddhism.  In  each,  interpretation  be- 
gotten of  speculation  embraced  alien  thought  and  bore 
hybrid  descendants,  some  harking  back  to  original  features, 
others  far  removed  from  any  likeness  to  the  founder.  In 
other  regards  also  the  two  religions  are  similar.  As  Buddha 
has  been  resolved  into  a  sun-myth,  so  Jesus  Christ  has  been 
explained  as  cosmic  truth  in  legendary  form,  a  Gilgamesh 
or  other  divine  hero.  The  wisdom  of  Buddha  has  been  re- 
ferred to  Zoroaster  and  to  Moses ;  that  of  Jesus  to  Seneca 
and  Epictetus.  Finally,  the  life,  temptation,  miracles,  para- 
bles, and  even  the  disciples  of  Jesus  have  been  derived  di- 
rectly from  Buddhism.  In  general,  these  speculations  are 
based  on  similarities  too  slight  to  consider,  or  too  rare  to 
affect  a  general  judgment.  It  was  not  till  the  second  cen- 
tury that  Buddhistic  teaching  affected  the  story  of  Jesus. 
Within  almost  a  generation  of  his  death,  the  words  and 
activities  of  Jesus  and  of  his  immediate  followers  were  com- 
mitted to  writing.  The  account  is  too  near  the  event  to 
justify  doubt  as  to  the  historicity  of  Jesus.  He  was  no 
myth.  His  birth,  in  current  opinion,  occurred  a  few  years 
(perhaps  six  to  eight)  before  the  usually  accepted  Year  of 
Our  Lord.  It  is  not  spoken  of  as  a  supernatural  event  by 
the  author  of  the  oldest  Gospel  nor  by  Jesus  himself;  nor 
by  any  of  his  disciples  in  their  conversations  is  it  referred  to 
as  a  proof  of  his  divinity.  Paul,  too,  is  silent  regarding  it. 
But  as  an  early  article  of  faith  it  was  introduced  into  the 
opening  chapter  of  Luke  and  the  introduction  prefaced  to 
Matthew.1 

1  The  synoptic  Gospels  appear  to  derive  from  precepts  compiled 

552 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        553 

Apocryphal  writings,  some  of  which  were  at  first  regarded 
as  authoritative  Scripture,1  show  that  many  impossible  tales 
soon  gathered  about  the  personality  of  Jesus  and  his  mother. 
His  life  was  a  centre  upon  which  converged  religious  specu- 
lation. Some  have  thought  that  for  this  reason  his  per- 
sonality must  be  fictitious.  But  because  myths  gather  about 
a  person  it  does  not  follow  that  the  person  is  a  myth.  On 
the  other  hand,  no  one  who  knows  history,  especially  Ori- 
ental history,  will  doubt  that  the  heirs  of  the  founders  of  all 
religions  have  framed  their  portraits  in  golden  legends,  such 
as  the  tale  of  the  mediaeval  Kings  of  the  East.  To  see  how 
one  such  history  was  made  shows  how  other  history  may 
have  been  made.  This  myth  of  the  kings  was  invented 
piously  to  honour  Christ  and  it  is  not  without  its  inner 
truth,  for  it  strikes  the  note,  made  resonant  by  Paul,  that 
the  Glad  Tidings  concerned  not  the  Jews  alone,  but  all  the 
known  world. 

In  its  first  form  the  legend  says  that  wise  men  of  the  East, 
presumably  Zoroastrian  Magi,  were  led  to  the  cave  where 
the  Child  was  born.  This  was  the  cave,  one  of  the  Church 
Fathers  tells  us,  in  which  the  venerated  Mother-goddess  of 
the  heathen  bore  her  divine  child.  It  was  centuries  before 
the  sages  became  "  Kings  of  Orient"  Epiphany  also,  taken 
from  the  cult  of  Dionysos,  became  a  day  (Jan.  6)  more 
celebrated  than  Christmas,  which  latter  date  (as  Dec.  25) 
was  indeed  not  fixed  till  the  fourth  century,  when  it  was 

about  the  time  of  the  greater  Pauline  epistles  (50-60  A.  D.)  and 
from  anecdotes  reported  by  Peter.  The  oldest  Gospel  is  that  of 
Mark  (c.  75  A.  D.).  The  present  Gospels  of  Matthew  and  Luke 
revert  to  a  source  designated  as  Q  by  Biblical  scholars.  In  Mark 
the  precept-side  gives  way  to  the  emphasis  laid  on  the  power  and 
authority  of  Jesus;  Matthew  and  Luke  lay  more  weight  on  the 
teachings  of  Jesus.  The  basis  of  Acts  xvi-xxii  may  be  dated  c.  62 
A.  i>.  According  to  R.  W.  Husband,  The  Prosecution  of  Jesus, 
Princeton  Press,  1916,  the  trial  of  Jesus  took  place  Friday,  April 
3,  33  A.  D. 

1  Conversely,  Hebrews  (written  81-85  A.  D.)  and  Revelation  were 
still  held  as  un-scriptural  in  the  second  century,  though  Hebrews 
was  "edifying."  Montanus  (see  below)  may  have  caused  Revela- 
tion to  be  looked  upon  with  suspicion. 


554  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

taken  from  the  Mithra-cult.  The  first  step  made  the  Magi 
three  in  number,  representing  Europe  and  Africa  as  well 
as  Asia,  whence  in  mediaeval  art  one  is  represented  as  a 
Negro.  Western  tradition  of  the  second  century  fixes  the 
number  of  Magi  as  three,  but  Syrian  writers  assume  twelve. 
They  did  not  become  kings  till  the  sixth  century,  doubtless 
that  the  Scripture  might  be  fulfilled  (Ps.  Ixx.  10). 

Palestine,  long  distressed,  had  many  would-be  Messiahs, 
some  deluded,  some  imposters,  trading  on  Jewish  hope. 
That  the  Messiah  was  divine,  that  the  earth  was  made  by 
him  in  a  pre-existent  state,  was  now  the  conception  of  the 
Jewish  world  (see  2  Esdras,  vi.  if.).  Jesus  was  persuaded 
that  he  was  the  Messiah  (Christ),  yet  he  looked  not  for  a 
worldly  kingdom,  nor  for  the  realization  of  the  later  Jewish 
ideal,  which  was  built  on  the  Law  and  saw  God  afar  off; 
but,  with  the  early  prophets,  he  conceived  of  God  as  present, 
speaking  now  in  the  heart.  At  the  same  time  he  was  not 
uninfluenced  by  that  wider  idea  of  God  which  came  after 
the  worship  of  Yahweh  as  a  national  deity.  He  is  not  the 
son  of  Yahweh  but  of  God;  yet  he  saw  God  as  a  Father 
in  heaven,  who  loved  his  children  and  demanded  obedience 
in  inner  life  rather  than  in  outer  form.  He  accepted  also 
the  later  teaching  in  regard  to  the  soul  and  resurrection. 
It  has  been  imagined  by  some  scholars  that  Jesus  was  in- 
debted to  the  Essenes  (above,  p.  446)  for  his  teachings. 
But  their  ideal  was  utterly  opposed  to  his.  They  fled  the 
world;  he  consorted  with  all;  they  did  not  proselytize;  he 
sent  out  missionaries;  they  emphasized  ceremonial  purity; 
he  cared  little  for  it.  His  antecedents  were  rather  those 
old  Hebrews  whose  disdain  of  cult  in  comparison  with  spir- 
itual religion  found  an  echo  in  his  own  teaching.  There 
had  also  been  great  spiritual  progress  among  the  Jews  for 
a  century  before  Jesus.1  It  is  well  to  realize  that  Jesus,  the 
last  of  the  Jews,  that  is,  of  the  great  Palestine  Jews,  even 
in  his  words  is  closely  linked  with  his  people's  past,  both 

1  See  especially  Enoch,  the  Book  of  Wisdom,  and  the   (Saddu- 
cean)  Ecclesiasticus,  in  the  centuries  just  before  Christ. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        555 

remote  and  near.  Thus  with  one  Psalmist  he  promised  that 
those  who  loved  God  should  find  joy  in  him  (Ps.  v.  n),  and 
with  another,  who  said  "  the  meek  shall  inherit  the  earth  " 
(Ps.  xxxvii.  n),  he  was  in  full  accord.  As  the  Psalmist 
cries,  "  I  will  love  thee,  O  Lord,"  and  again,  "  God  is  the 
father  of  the  fatherless  "  (Ps.  xviii.  I ;  Ixviii.  5),  so  he  taught 
that  God  is  the  heavenly  Father  whom  man  should  love. 
The  "  poor  and  fatherless  "  (Ps.  Ixxxii.  3)  were  ever  in  his 
thought  and  with  the  cry,  "  Thou  art  my  Father,  my  God, 
and  the  rock  of  my  salvation,"  words  that  revert  to  Psalmist 
and  the  Song  of  Moses  (Ps.  Ixxxix.  26  and  Deut.  xxxii), 
he  comforted  himself  in  trial.  From  this  source  was  drawn 
the  tender  image  of  the  nestlings  under  brooding  wings 
(Ps.  xci.  4).  The  humility  of  man,  the  greatness,  yet  the 
love,  of  God  as  Father,  are  all  pre-Christian  elements,  as 
they  are  outstanding  features  of  the  religion  of  Jesus, 
who,  however,  taught  his  law  of  love  and  love  as  a  law 
more  surely,  because  more  explicitly  and  more  serenely, 
than  did  his  remote  ancestors  or  his  immediate  predecessor, 
John  the  Baptist.  In  fine,  he  freed  the  gold  from  the  dross ; 
in  his  teaching  he  took  the  best  and  truest  ideas  handed 
down  from  of  old  and  made  them  the  supreme  test  of  a  re- 
ligious spirit.  What  they  implied,  he  expressed :  if  God  be 
Father  of  all,  then  shall  each  son  be  brother  to  each.  It  is 
this  which  created  the  "  beloved  community  "  and  gave  the 
Church  its  unifying  power. 

Jesus  is  represented  as  performing  miracles,  some  of 
which  would  be  accepted  today  as  due  to  the  curative  power 
of  a  strong  spirituality,  while  others  came  in  response  to  the 
usual  Eastern  demand  for  marvels,  which  have  always  been 
required  of  a  religious  leader.  Jesus  himself  deprecated 
such  signs  and  the  Biblical  narrative  intimates  that  they 
were  often  the  result  of  subjective  belief :  Mk.  vi.  5 :  "  He 
could  there  do  no  mighty  work  " ;  because  of  their  unbe- 
lief, Matt.  xiii.  58.  Paul,  too,  never  mentions  miracles  as 
a  proof  of  Christ's  divine  power.  But  he  may  not  have 
heard  of  them;  or  he  regarded  them  as  the  inevitable  ac- 


556  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

companiment  of  spiritual  potency,  which  in  the  popular 
apprehension  might  manifest  itself  as  easily  in  multiplying 
fishes  as  in  curing  disease  or  expelling  devils.1 

Paul's  reticence  is  eloquent  also  when  he  tells  the  story 
of  the  resurrection,  which  interested  him  more  than  any 
event  in  the  history  of  Jesus,  for  he  omits  some  of  the  strik- 
ing details  given  by  the  synoptic  gospels,  which  are,  indeed, 
not  in  complete  accord  as  to  the  time  (whether  the  resur- 
rection occurred  on  the  third  day  or  after  three  days).2 

At  this  point  it  is  thought  by  some  scholars  that  there 
has  been  fusion  with  the  much  older  resurrection-story 
which  long  before  Jesus'  day  had  held  the  East  enthralled. 
As  in  the  later  contact  with  the  Mithra-cult,  it  is  not  pos- 
sible to  say  definitively  whether  the  later  religion  borrowed 
from  the  earlier;  but  as  the  two  traditions  cover  the  same 
time  and  same  territory,  and  present  unusual  similarity,  no 
historian  has  a  right  to  ignore  the  striking  resemblance  of 
the  general  faith  with  that  resurrection-faith  which  began 
with  Peter  and  Paul,  when  they  made  the  crucified  Jesus  as 
resurrected  Christ  an  Avatar  of  God.  The  cult  of  Cybele 
and  Attis  coalesced  in  some  regards  with  that  of  Mithra. 
Its  Megalesia  were  rites  of  the  spring  equinox.  They  began 

1  Curing    blindness,    stilling    storm,    walking    on    water,    turning 
water  to  wine,   are  miracles  mentioned  also  of  others,  by  Jewish 
and    Greek    writers.    Turning    water    into    wine    is    a    miracle    of 
Dionysos,  whose  epiphany  was  thus  marked  on  Jan.  6.     Compare 
Bousset,   Kyrios  Christos,  Gottingen,   1913,  p.   72!    For  Buddhist 
parallels,  see  above,  p.  195,  note. 

2  So  the  author  of  the  fourth  Gospel  (c.  100)   omits  the  tempta- 
tion and  the  eucharist  at  the  Supper.    This  Evangelist  differs  from 
the  others  not  only  in  introducing  the  interpretation  of  Christ  as 
the  manifestation  of  the  Logos,  divine  Reason,  but  also  in  seeing 
Jesus   more   remotely,   in   making  him   active  at  Jerusalem  rather 
than  in  the  country,  etc.     Paintings  of  scenes  from  this  Gospel  are 
found  as  early  as  180  A.  D.     It  may  have  been  in  use  in  Rome  at  the 
beginning  of  this  century.    The  Logos  of  "John"  is  not  that  of 
Philo  Judaeus;  it  is  the  One  Logos  as  contrasted  with  the  many 
"  powers  "  and  logoi  of   Philo.    The  two  probably  drew  from  the 
common  stock  of  ideas  current  at  the  time.     "After  three  days," 
in  the  Roman  Gospel  of  Mark,  may  reflect  the  older  resurrection- 
story  of  Attis-Osiris-Dionysos,  originally  one. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        557 

with  the  carrying  of  reeds,  among  which  Attis,  like  Moses 
and  Sargon  of  Akkad,  had  been  exposed,  and  continued  with 
a  fast  of  nine  days.  At  the  end  of  this  fast  was  portrayed 
the  "  procession  of  the  tree,'*  with  lamentation  and  self- 
inflicted  mutilations,  initiating  the  "  day  of  blood,"  which 
represented  the  god's  death.  Then,  after  three  days,  came 
the  "  day  of  joy,"  which  represented  the  resurrection  of  the 
god,  and  was  celebrated  with  glad  cries  of  "  Attis  is  risen." 
A  weak  Greek  version  of  the  cult  lingers  in  Theocritus'  de- 
scription of  the  Adonis  festival  at  Alexandria.  About  200, 
Clement  of  Alexandria  was  initiated  into  these  Cybele  mys- 
teries before  he  became  a  Father  of  the  Church,  and  Ter- 
tullian  joined  a  sect  which  was  founded  by  an  old  Cybele 
worshipper.  The  mysteries,  it  will  be  remembered  (above, 
p.  541),  were  brought  to  Rome  c.  200  B.C.1  But,  though 
the  idea  of  a  risen  god  was  common,  that  of  a  god  suffer- 
ing for  us,  that  of  the  "  blood  shed  for  us,"  was  new. 

Paul,  before  whose  death,  64  A.  D.,  the  new  religion  had 
spread  over  the  Roman  empire,  was  the  founder  of  Christ- 
ianity in  distinction  from  the  religion  of  Jesus.  His  Chris- 
tology  is  not  drawn  from  the  apocalyptic  literature  of  Pales- 
tine but  from  the  Wisdom  literature  of  Alexandria.  He 
saw  the  Gospel-story  in  the  light  of  his  knowledge  of  Greek 
and  Alexandrine  philosophy  and  of  the  divine  mysteries 
current  in  Greece,  and  thus  gave  a  new  interpretation  of 
Christ,  who,  as  the  risen  Lord  and  Spirit  of  God,  fills  the 
believer  and  makes  him  one  with  the  Lord.  In  so  doing 
he  discarded  his  own  earlier  apocalyptic  interpretation  of 
Jesus  (as  Jewish  Messiah).  In  Paul  there  is  still  vibrant 
the  spirit  of  Jesus  (love,  meekness,  joy,  faith  inspire  it)  ; 
but  this  spirit  is  already  over-laid  with  intellectualism.  His 
preoccupation  is  not  with  the  life  and  words  of  Jesus,  but 
with  the  spirit  of  God  revealed  in  the  resurrection  of  Christ. 
Converted  by  a  Christophany,  he  saw  Christ  ever  above  the 

1  Admixture  of  other  cults  such  as  that  of  Osiris  is  historically 
possible.  Later  Ephesian  Mariolatry  probably  owes  much  to  ab- 
sorption of  the  local  Artemis-cult,  of  which  Paul  speaks. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

earth.  Scholar  and  student  of  Gamaliel,  the  pupil  of  Hillel 
(above,  p.  447),  but  also  a  student  of  the  older  Wisdom 
(Tarsus  where  he  was  born  was  a  seat  of  philosophy),  he 
desired  to  prove  his  faith  to  the  Gentiles.  Paul  does  not 
dwell  on,  though  he  recognizes,  Jesus  as  the  teacher  of  a 
new  religious  life  and  ideal ;  rather  he  cites  his  resurrection 
as  a  proof  of  life  after  death.  For  he  that  believes  in  the 
risen  Lord  becomes  also  immortal.1  Paul  even  uses  O.  T. 
phrases  of  the  Lord  Yahweh  as  if  they  were  of  the  Lord 
Christ. 

The  statement  of  Ben  Sira  (c.  180  B.  c.),  that  "  from  a 
woman  was  the  beginning  of  sin  and  because  of  her  we  all 
die  "  (xxv.  24),  appears  in  Paul  in  the  form  that  death  and 
sin  entered  the  world  through  Adam  and  man  inherits  death 
and  sin  till  Christ  dies  for  man.  Jesus  says  not  a  word  of 
this  origin  of  sin,  and  the  old  Prophets,  who  talk  much  of 
man's  depravity,  do  not  suggest  it.  Paul  also  extends  the 
idea  of  the  new  man  possessed  by  Christ  to  the  Church, 
which  is  the  body  of  Christ.  This  conception  at  a  later 
date  greatly  strengthened  Church  authority.  Paul's  chief 
theological  features  are  justification  by  faith,  atonement, 
opposition  to  legal  Judaism,  and  the  mystic  idea  of  the  Spirit 
of  Christ  possessing  man  (thus  driving  out  the  evil  spirit 
obsessing  him)  and  making  the  believer  able  to  cast  out 
devils,  speak  prophetic  words,  etc.  In  close  connexion  with 
this  mystic  view,  baptism  drives  off  evil  spirits  and  so  may 
be  performed  "  for  the  dead "  (to  free  them  from  evil 
spirits,  i  Cor.  xv.  29).  Moreover,  as  sacrifice  to  devils 
brings  fellowship  with  devils  (i  Cor.  x.  20),  so  communion 
through  sacrifice  gives  divine  power. 

Whether  eventually  Mazdean  or  Babylonian,  the  eschatol- 
ogy  of  the  first  century  is  a  direct  inheritance  from  Judaism. 
Jewish  conceptions  as  to  Paradise  and  Abraham's  Bosom, 

1  As  genuine  epistles  of  Paul  may  be  conservatively  recognized 
the  First  to  the  Thessalonians,  Corinthians,  Galatians,  Romans, 
Philippians,  Philemon,  Colossians  (and  Ephesians?).  Some  extrem- 
ists hold  that  all  the  Pauline  epistles  are  spurious. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        559 

the  new  Jerusalem,  with  the  four  and  twenty  elders,  the 
angels  of  the  gates,  etc.,  present  nothing  new.1 

At  the  beginning  of  the  second  century  (to  which  period 
may  be  referred  the  epistles  to  Timothy  and  Titus,  the  Gos- 
pels of  John  and  Peter,  the  second  epistle  of  Peter  and  those 
of  Jude  and  John,  of  Pseudo-Barnabas  and  Ignatius,  the 
Didache,  and  the  Shepherd  of  Hernias),  Gnostic  philos- 
ophy attempted  to  absorb  Christianity  and  give  it  out  again 
as  a  cosmic  scheme.  Nature-religions  still  opposed  the 
faith.  Jewish  Christians  perverted  it.  Imperialism  con- 
fronted it  with  the  one  universal  worship  (that  of  the  em- 
peror). Episcopal  power  was  now  beginning  to  form, 
though  the  Church  was  still  regarded  as  a  body  of  be- 
lievers rather  than  as  a  united  organization.  Pseudo-Bar- 
nabas broke  with  the  Jews  through  his  teaching  that  the  old 
Law  had  been  not  a  preliminary  preparation  but  a  pun- 
ishment for  their  obstinacy.  Clement  of  Rome  conciliated 
the  apostolic  contention  as  to  faith  and  works;  he  depre- 
cated sects.  "  Love  (he  says)  knows  naught  of  schism." 
In  the  West,  Rome  began  to  show  its  authority,  as  seat  of 
Peter  and  Paul.  "  Rome,  in  a  presidency  of  love,  our 
teacher,"  says  Ignatius  sweetly.2  He  exalts  the  bishop  as 
representing  God,  though  he  recognizes  no  apostolic  suc- 
cession or  priestly  function  of  the  clergy.  He  condemns 
Gnosticism  for  overwhelming  Christian  truth  and  (the 
Docetic)  heresy,3  which  made  Christ's  sufferings  only  ap- 

1  Compare  Ezek.  xlviii.  3gf.  and  Rev.  xxi.   121.  and  see  Clemen, 
Primitive  Christianity  and  its  non-Jewish  Sources,  New  York,  1912, 
p.   iO2f.     For  Paul's  language  reflecting  Greek  thought,  see  2  Cor. 
xii.  2f.  and  Gal.  vi.  17.    The  descent  into  hell  is  a  refinement  of  a 
Mandaean  mystery. 

2  Ignatius   (c.  115?)   first  speaks  of  "  Christianism "   (Christianity 
as  a  body  and  as  a  state  of  mind),  of   "  eucharist,"  and   of  the 
"  Catholic  "  Church  :     "  Where  Jesus  Christ  is,  there  is  the  Catholic 
(universal)    Church."    He  is  also  the  first  to  mention   the  virgin 
birth   (outside  the  N.  T.),  and  to  speak  of  Jesus  as  iatros,  a  mys- 
tery-term used  with  soter  (Asklepios). 

3  Docetism  was  an  old  doctrine.     Helen's  "imaginary  life"  formed 
the    basis    for    the    earliest    Greek    "  recantation "    of    heresy    (the 
Palinode).    Docetism  is  also  found  in  Buddhism. 


560  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

parent.     He  has  no  trinitarian  formula  (that  in  Matthew  is 
late)  or  theory  of  transubstantiation. 

The  Didache,  perhaps  c.  120  (possibly  before  the  second 
century),  enjoins  baptism  (for  adults)  which  is  performed 
in  living  (running)  water  after  a  two  days'  fast,  immersion 
preferred;  if  this  be  impracticable,  one  is  sprinkled,  with 
cold  or  warm  water.  The  Love-feast  (later  abandoned) 
here  appears  to  be  one  with  the  Lord's  Supper,  at  which  the 
formula  was :  "  We  thank  Thee,  our  Father,  for  the  life 
and  knowledge  which  Thou  hast  made  known  to  us  through 
Jesus,  thy  servant." x  The  Didache  recommends  confes- 
sion of  sins  in  the  church  and  communistic  fellowship  in 
property.  Polycarp,  reputed  pupil  of  John  and  teacher 
of  Irenaeus,  in  the  middle  of  this  century  reviles  a  "  son 
of  Satan "  who  may  be  Marcion.  This  Marcion,  the 
first  reformer,  eliminated  from  "  Scripture "  everything 
except  Paul  and  an  expurgated  edition  of  Luke.  To  Jus- 
tin also  (martyred  between  163  and  167)  Marcion  was 
an  advocatus  diaboli.2  Clearly  strife  was  already  rife  in 
the  Church.  To  Justin,  Christ  is  Son  of  God  (but  "  in  the 
second  place")  made  manifest  as  the  divine  intelligence, 
hitherto  shown  less  decidedly  in  Moses,  Socrates,  etc.,  who 
also  were  forms  of  the  Logos.  Acceptance  of  Christ  with 
Justin  is  acceptance  of  his  message,  not  of  him  as  a  meta- 
physical proposition.  Every  man  according  to  his  actions  in 
life  receives  eternal  punishment  or  salvation.  Sin  is  for- 
given when  one  fasts,  prays  for  forgiveness,  and  is  baptized. 
Within  a  few  years  of  Justin's  attack  on  Marcion  (139- 
140),  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas  shows  a  lenient  attitude 
toward  teachings  inclining  to  Gnosticism  (the  author  con- 

1  The  post-exilic  Isaiah  uses  of  the  martyred  people  the  phrase 
ebed    Yahweh,   "  servant  of   God,"   translated   TCUS  deov}   hence   vios 
0eov,  as   *•<"*   means   son   as   well   as   servant.     This   is    Paul's  con- 
ception of  Jesus  as  the  pre-existent  Christ,  yet,  though  Lord,  the 
suffering    servant   of    God.    The    conventional    ideal    of    Matt.    xi. 
25-30;  xxiii.  34-39  is  drawn  from  Alexandrine  Wisdom  literature. 

2  Marcion's  denial  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah  led  to  the  baptismal 
formula  which  afterwards  produced  the  "  Apostles'  Creed." 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        561 

fuses,  as  did  Paul,  2  Cor.  iii.  17,  the  Son  with  the  Spirit) 
and  teaches  that  works  of  supererogation  win  glory.  For 
generations  this  work  was  regarded  as  Scripture  (it  was 
appealed  to  as  authority  for  keeping  Easter  on  Sunday).1 
Yet  "  John "  had  already  formulated  the  creed  to  be : 
Christ  was  the  Logos,  Creator,  God.  "  The  Word  was 
God."  All  else  was  matter  of  definition.  In  point  of  fact, 
it  was  no  longer  a  question  whether  Christology,  the  doc- 
trine about  Christ,  or  the  teachings  of  Jesus  were  the  kernel 
of  religion.  Christology  had  won.  Those  who  denied  the 
metaphysical  doctrine  became  unchristian. 

Yet  sundry  heresies  arose  in  this  period,  which  has  been 
called  that  of  the  Defenders  of  the  Faith  (Apologists). 
Not  only  did  the  Jewish  Christians,  chiefly  Ebionites,  deny 
Christ's  divinity  (other  Jewish  sects  were  the  Elkasites  and 
Nazarenes),  but  there  sprang  up  in  the  second  century 
the  Alogoi,  a  Christian  sect  that  denied  that  Christ  was 
the  Logos.  Besides  doctrinal  difference,  extravagance  in 
discipline  occurred.  About  150,  Montanus,  a  Cybele  priest 
of  Phrygia,  became  converted  and  wandered  about  drum- 
ming up  recruits  with  two  female  companions,  proclaiming 
himself  to  be  the  Spirit  of  Truth  (John  xvi.  13),  who  had 
come  with  a  new  discipline  better  than  that  of  Christ,  as  he 
was  a  prophet  superior  to  Christ.  This  discipline  was 
strongly  tinged  with  Cybele-elements,  ecstatic  manifesta- 
tions and  extreme  self-mortification,  in  order  to  meet  prop- 
erly the  second  coming  of  Christ.  Montanus  made  great 
use  of  Revelation ;  his  religious  phase  was  distinctly  re- 
vivalistic;  he  and  his  women  with  their  exhortations  and 
music  must  have  had  a  Salvation  Army  effect.  It  affected 
the  fiery  African  Tertullian,  who  became  suspect  on  account 
of  his  allegiance  to  Montanism.  The  sober  Church  depre- 
cated its  extravagance,  as  it  also  opposed  the  roaming 

1  By  this  time,  although  the  collection  of  the  N.T.  was  not  settled 
till  the  third  or  fourth  century,  the  Christian  belief  in  the  trinity, 
in  Christ  born  of  the  Virgin  Marv,  as  son  of  God,  in  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  body,  and  the  doctrine  of  'atonement  was  fully  estab- 
lished. 


562  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

"  prophets,"  who  tramped  through  the  country  begging  for 
gold  but  unwilling  to  work  for  a  meal.  The  Didache  warns 
against  them :  "  If  they  will  not  work,  give  them  nothing." 
Asceticism  did  not  become  a  marked  religious  factor  till 
the  fourth  century. 

Two  great  teachers  of  the  West  appeared  at  the  close  of 
the  second  century,  Irenaeus  of  Lyons,  who  wrote  against 
heresies  (181-189),  and  Tertullian  of  Carthage  (c.  150- 
225).  Irenaeus  believed  in  the  speedy  coming  of  Christ. 
He  believed  also  that  Adam  had  made  mortal  what  God 
had  made  immortal  and  that  Christ  re-made  man  immortal, 
thus  redeeming  him.  Redemption  generally  in  the  East  (the 
Church  was  still  practically  Eastern)  meant  not  from  sin 
but  from  death.  Tertullian,  a  greater  man,  who  founded  a 
sect  of  his  own  in  Africa,  opposed  the  "  mottled  Christi- 
anity "  (mixed  with  philosophy)  of  Antioch  and  Alexandria. 
Christianity  to  him  meant  a  change  of  heart,  "  new  law,  new 
promise,"  not  a  theory  of  Christ's  nature.  Tertullian  first 
used  Latin  as  a  medium  of  Church  teaching;  he  also  showed 
the  Latin  spirit  and  appealed  to  Church  tradition  as  author- 
ity and  guardian  of  truth.  He  had  a  deep  sense  of  sin  and 
of  the  need  of  salvation,  which  is  won  largely  by  good 
works.  Confession  and  self-mortification  follow  baptism 
as  means  of  grace.  Unforgivable  sin  (e.  g.  adultery)  leads 
to  excommunication.  In  all  this  the  doctrine  of  the  later 
Church  is  anticipated.  Tertullian  (against  Praxeas)  first 
used  the  word  trinity  in  its  present  sense  and  anticipated  the 
creed  of  the  next  century.  But  his  view  that  the  Church  was 
the  body  of  those  who  had  experienced  a  change  of  heart, 
was  not  that  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome  (Kallistus,  c.  220), 
who  treated  adultery  as  forgivable  and  regarded  the  Church 
as  a  body  of  the  baptized,  that  is,  a  corporate  group  of  me- 
chanically admitted  members,  which  group  served  as  an  ark 
of  safety.  Rome,  whose  founders,  Romulus  and  Remus, 
now  gave  up  their  places  on  the  calendar  of  feast-days,  to 
Peter  and  Paul,  as  founders  of  the  new  Rome,  was  already 
becoming  authoritative.  She  stood  alone  in  the  West,  while 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        563 

the  Eastern  Church  had  several  schools,  none  of  which 
would  yield  priority  to  another.  In  the  third  century  the 
Western  priesthood  became  organized,  mediating  between 
man  and  God ;  as  the  Supper  became  the  Mass,  a  sacrifice 
performed  by  the  priest. 

Gnosticism,  to  which  Tertullian  objected,  did  not  oppose 
Christianity  but  professed  to  interpret  it.  First  of  all,  the 
Gnostics  believed  in  development,  not  in  creation.  Irenaeus 
declares  that  "  God  alone  can  make  something  out  of  noth- 
ing "  (de  nihilo  fecisti  coelum  et  terram,  says  Augustine), 
but  the  Gnostic  regarded  nihil  ex  nihilo  as  axiomatic.  The 
world  is  evil ; l  it  is  "  made  "  only  by  an  evil  being  opposed 
to  God  and  man's  soul,  which  is  now  bound  by  planetary 
spirits  and  can  be  released  by  Christ's  knowledge  of  the 
mysteries.  Paul's  use  of  stoicheia  arid  kosmokratores  (Gal. 
iv.  3;  Eph.  i.  21)  is  Gnostic  (compare  allusions  to  prob- 
able Gnosticism  in  I  Tim.  i.  4;  vi.  20;  2  Tim.  iii.  6-8). 
Knowledge,  not  faith,  saves;  Christ  frees  entangled  but  di- 
vine Wisdom  in  the  soul.  Salvation  is  open  only  to  the 
wise  or  spiritual,  the  elect.  This  doctrine,  essentially  Or- 
phic, is  built  upon  the  hypostasis  of  attributes  (Wisdom, 
etc.).  Docetism  (see  above),  taught  by  Simon  Magus,  ex- 
plains Christ's  humanity  as  unreal. 

Gnostic  elements  entered  into  Ebionitism  and  its  fantastic 
spiritism2  affected  the  Alexandrian  Christians;  but  it  led 
to  the  result  that  Christianity,  which  to  Gnosticism  was  a 
theosophic  myth,  was  obliged  to  define  itself,  examine  its 

tt  *  Evil  is  due  to  an  antagonistic  spirit  or  is  inherent  in  matter  or  is 
absence  of  light,'  according  to  different  Gnostic  views.  In  the 
U.I.  and  early  Greek  philosophy,  God  is  not  "light";  this  is  a 
Gnostic  idea.  Gnosticism  is  older  than  the  second  century  when 
it  first  developed  powerful  schools,  such  as  those  of  Basilides  and 
Valentmus,  c.  130-160. 

2  Not  to  be  overlooked  is  the  admixture  of  magical  elements  in 
the  interpretation  of  Christianity,  the  notion  that  Christ  came  to 
save  the  world  from  the  devil,  who  wished  to  prevent  the  sun 
from  rising,  etc.  These  vulgar  and  ignorant  views  prevailed  among 
the  common  people  from  the  fourth  to  the  sixth  century.  They 
derive,  however,  from  the  old  mystery-element,  the  struggle  against 
the  powers  of  darkness,  which  Christianity  had  absorbed. 


564  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

own  documents,  and  ethically  to  insist  on  moral  rules  disre- 
garded by  the  Gnostics,  who  "  calmed  the  spirit  for  philoso- 
phy "  by  repression  or  by  indulgence  (Nicolaitan  view,  like 
that  of  the  Hindu  Tantrists).  Owing  to  Gnostic  misuse  of 
the  texts,  the  Church  had  to  determine  its  canon.  Thus 
Irenaeus  already  cites  the  four  gospels  as  fundamental, 
"like  the  four  winds  or  four  quarters"  (c.  186).  Tatian 
(pupil  of  Justin),  who  held  Encratite  views  (condemning 
wine,  flesh,  and  marriage),  about  160  made  a  combination 
gospel,  Diatessaron,  used  for  three  centuries  in  Syria.  This 
process  of  definition  and  exclusion,  however,  led  again  to 
greater  strictness  of  doctrine,  which  in  turn  added  greater 
authority  to  the  Church,  giving  it  power  to  decide  orthodox 
doctrine,  as  against  any  individual  interpretation. 

Origen  at  Alexandria  (200-250)  tried  to  reconcile  science 
and  religion.  Like  his  predecessors  Justin  and  Clement 
(c.  200),  Origen  held  that  God  was  always  educating  man. 
Whatever  is  most  perfect  in  humanity  is  divine.  Christ  is 
the  culmination  of  a  progressive  manifestation;  in  him  the 
divine  Fatherhood  is  freely  realized.  "  Whatever  has  been 
rightly  said  among  all  men  belongs  to  us  Christians ;  all  wise 
men  previously  have  dimly  seen  the  truth  through  the 
Logos-seed  implanted  in  them"  (Justin).  Clement  taught 
the  immanence  of  God ;  men  are  akin  to  God.1  He  also  was 
the  first  clearly  to  assert  the  doctrine  of  free-will.  Love  of 
God  to  him  is  apprehension  of  the  good,  a  knowledge  higher 
than  faith.  His  follower,  Origen  (Egyptian  by  birth  and 
name),  unfortunately  combined  with  Christian  theology  a 
mass  of  occult  Gnostic  teaching:  sin  is  due  to  obsession  by 
evil  spirits;  the  body  is  inflicted  as  punishment  for  sin  (man 
has  a  pre-existent  soul);  stars  .are  intelligent  beings;  all 
rational  existence  will  be  merged  at  last  in  one  unity,  em- 
bracing Christ  and  Satan;  and  (Universalist  doctrine)  all 

1  Clement  of  Alexandria,  head  of  its  school  of  religion,  succeeded 
Pantaenus,  the  "  missionary  to  India,"  who  is  said  to  have  found 
there  the  Aramaean  gospel  of  Matthew.  The  immanence  of  God 
is  also  a  Stoic  doctrine  (see  p.  542).  Plotinus  lived  at  this  time, 
whose  spirtual  enthusiasm  affected  Augustine. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        565 

souls  will  finally  be  saved.  Salvation  comes  from  illumi- 
nation. Christ's  blood  is  a  ransom,  paid  to  Satan  to  free 
souls  from  the  evil  power.  The  blood  of  martyrs  is  also  a 
redeeming  power.1  But  Origen's  fantastic  ideas,  like  his 
allegorical  interpretation  of  Scripture,  are  of  little  account. 
What  is  important  is  his  liberality.  He  based  Christianity 
on  the  history  of  man,  not  on  dogma.  As  a  scholar,  he  is 
noteworthy  also  for  having  first  made  a  critical  edition  of 
the  Bible.  He  declared,  too,  that  the  son  was  homoousian 
(of  the  same  nature)  with  the  Father,  though  he  made 
Christ  a  "  second  God,"  a  God  subordinate  to  The  God.  In 
face  of  a  cultured  scep.icism,  it  was  the  task  of  Origen  to 
prove  that  the  God-man  exists  as  such ;  only  thus  could  the 
hesitant  world  of  scholars  be  brought  to  the  faith.  The 
Logos-doctrine  thus  won  a  practical  as  well  as  a  metaphysical 
value.  It  not  only  declared  that  Christ  was  the  Logos  but 
maintained  that  the  Logos  was  Christ,  giving  a  philosophical 
foundation  to  Christianity. 

Origen  went  to  Rome  but  was  disheartened  by  two  things : 
first,  the  vice  and  venality  of  Roman  Church  officials,  and 
second,  the  prevalence  of  the  Noetian  heresy,  which  denied 
the  three  persons  of  the  trinity  save  as  manifestations  of 
one.  This  led  to  the  Patripassian  or  Monarchian  view,  that 
God  suffered  in  Christ's  person  (below). 

The  Bishop  of  Rome  in  the  middle  of  the  third  century 
says  that  the  true  creed  will  not  divide  the  monad,  divine 
unity,  nor  make  Christ  a  creature.  But  he  says  also  that 
within  the  Church  some  believe  that  Christ  is  an  emanation 
(Sabellian  heresy)  ;  some  assume  three  hypostases  not  of 
one  substance ;  and  some  make  Son  and  Spirit  creatures  of 
God.  Paul  of  Samosata  (Bishop  of  Antioch,  where  Arius 
lived),  and  Sabellius  rejected  the  "three  persons."  Christ 

1  Justin's  soul  had  welcomed  martyrdom  but  some  Alexandrine 
fathers  evaded  the  test  when  Decius'  furious  persecution  came.  If 
the  blood  of  martyrs  did  not  redeem,  it  strengthened  the  Church, 
which  their  death  was  intended  to  weaken.  Under  Nero,  Domitian, 
Decius,  and  Valerian,  250-259,  the  blood  of  the  martyrs  was  indeed 
the  "seed  of  the  Church." 


566  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

to  God  is  as  light  to  the  sun ;  Logos  and  Spirit  are,  respec- 
tively, illuminating  and  enlivening  powers  or  modes  of  God. 
Origen  says :  "  Some  affirm  that  the  Saviour  is  God. 
Though  we  do  not  affirm  this,  yet  we  ascribe  authority  to 
him  as  the  Logos,  Wisdom,  Justice,  and  Truth  of  God." 

Thus  began  the  dispute,  the  settlement  of  which  at  last 
formulated  the  Nicene  Symbol  (creed).  Arius,  born  256, 
imbibed  at  Antioch  the  view  that  the  Son  was  subordinate, 
not  autotheos,  very  God,  co-eternal  with  God ;  "  there  was 
when  he  was  not."  Christ  is  a  creature,  God's  agent  in  cre- 
ating the  world.1  Eusebius,  Bishop  of  Nicomedia,  sup- 
ported him.  Constantine,  who  after  the  persecutions  of 
Decius,  Valerian,  and  Diocletian  (250-303)  had  granted 
the  Church  toleration,  found  it  necessary  to  settle  the  mat- 
ter by  an  ecumenical  council  of  some  three  hundred  dele- 
gates of  the  Church,  the  first  general  council.  Under  im- 
perial pressure  Arius  was  at  first  condemned,  but  the  con- 
test lasted  for  fifty  years,  led  by  Athanasius,  successor  of 
Alexander,  who  had  opposed  Arius.  Eventually  both  par- 
ties appealed  to  Rome,  where  Athanasius  was  recognized  as 
orthodox;  but  the  Bishop  of  Rome  in  350-355  lost  his  po- 
sition because  of  imperial  disfavour,  and  Athanasius  was 
condemned  by  the  Milan  Council.  Yet  Basil  the  Great, 
Gregory  of  Nyssa  and  Gregory  of  Nazianzus  still  supported 
him  and,  with  this  backing,  it  was  at  last  decided  that  Christ 
was  not  of  similar  nature  but  of  the  same  nature  with  God. 
Many  maintained  that  this  view  was  heterodox.  Arius  was 
about  to  be  reinstated  as  orthodox  when  he  died  (336). 
Trinitarian  metaphysical  orthodoxy  at  any  rate  was  estab- 
lished against  a  respectable  body  of  protestants,  and  it  seems 
to  have  been  due  mainly  to  imperial  will  that  one  side  suc- 
ceeded in  enforcing  its  belief.2 

1  He  is  thus  one  with  Yahweh,  as  was  held  by  Clement,  Irenaeus, 
Tertullian,    and   other   theologians    against   the   Gnostic   view   that 
Yahweh  was  an  evil  spirit  (because  creator). 

2  A  belief  in  the  trinity  (Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Spirit)  was  held 
by  all  Christians;  but  just  how  the  members  of  it  were  related  to 
each  other  was  first  decided  at  Nicaea  in  325. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        567 

The  Antioch  school  held  in  general  that  God  dwells  apart 
from  his  world  and  that  the  Son  is  a  creature;  the  Alex- 
andrian, that  God  is  immanent  in  his  world  and  that  the 
Son  is  not  a  creature.  Under  Theodosius  in  381  the  first 
Constantinople  Council  reaffirmed  the  Nicene  Symbol.  But 
Arianism  survived  long  among  the  Goths,  Burgundians, 
and  Lombards.  It  is  not  identical  with  Socinianism  (Faus- 
tus  Socinus,  1539-1604)  ;  for  Socinus  explained  Christ  as 
mere  man,  while  Arius  made  him  neither  man  nor  God. 
Modern  followers  of  Arius  were  Milton,  Newton,  and 
Locke,  and  the  early  American  Unitarians,  like  Channing 
(who  believed  in  a  pre-existent  Christ),  while  English  Uni- 
tarians of  the  eighteenth  century  were  rather  Socinian.  At 
present,  Unitarians,  like  Athanasius,  emphasize  Christ's  hu- 
manity, though,  to  quote  Chadwick,  they  make  the  propo- 
sition general  and  say  that  all  men  are  both  divine  and 
human. 

At  this  point  must  be  mentioned  a  matter  historically  more 
important  than  metaphysics.  At  the  Council  of  Aries  (314) 
were  present  English  Bishops  of  London,  York,  and  perhaps 
Lincoln.  Patrick  was  born  about  389.  Pelagius  (who  may 
have  been  English  or  Irish)  disputed  with  Augustine,  c. 
400,  at  Rome.  These  are  indications  how  far  missionary 
effort  had  already  been  extended. 

Minor  disputes  soon  arose  in  the  Church.  Nestorius  of 
Antioch  created  intense  excitement  by  denying  that  Mary 
was  mother  of  God,  maintaining  that  two  natures  and  two 
persons  were  connected  in  Christ.  After  years  of  painful 
mutual  anathemas  between  Antiochan  and  Alexandrian 
theologians,  the  Council  at  Chalcedon  (451)  decided  once 
for  all  that  Christ  has  one  person  and  two  natures,  not  two 
persons  and  two  natures,  and  not,  as  Eutyches  had  said, 
one  person  and  one  nature,  monphysite  heresy.1  Mean- 

1  Adherents  of  Eutyches  formed  the  schismatic  Coptic,  Abyssin- 
ian, and  Armenian  churches.  That  Christ  had  two  wills  (as  hav- 
ing two  natures)  was  declared  to  be  orthodox  doctrine  in  680  at 
the  third  Council  of  Constantinople. 


568  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

time  Nestorius,  condemned  at  Ephesus  in  431,  founded  his 
Chaldee  (Nestorian)  Church  of  Eastern  Protestants,  which 
sent  missionaries  to  the  far  East,  permitted  clergy  to  marry, 
and  condemned  the  use  of  images  and  pictures,  later  ex- 
pressly sanctioned  by  the  orthodox  Eastern  Church  at  the 
second  Nicean,  seventh  general,  Council,  in  787. 

The  Eastern  Church,  however,  had  one  more  problem  to 
settle,  ere  it  sank  into  that  repose  from  which  it  has  never 
since  emerged.  The  Nicean  Council  had  strangely  neglected 
to  formulate  the  status  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  which  an  earlier 
time  had  on  occasion  confused  with  the  Logos  and  even 
interpreted  as  the  Mother  Spirit.  Thus  Bardesanes  (died 
223)  called  the  Spirit  the  "  secret  Mother."  Some  believed 
the  Spirit  to  be  consubstantial  with  the  Father ;  some  ( Semi- 
Arians)  denied  the  Spirit's  divinity.  Bishop  Macedonius 
(a  sect  was  named  for  him)  taught  that  the  Spirit  is  a  crea- 
ture and  servant  of  God,  while  the  Son  is  divine  and  one 
with  the  Father.  But,  under  Gregory  of  Nazianzus,  a 
formal  definition  of  the  Spirit  was  made,  as  "  life-giv- 
ing Lord,  proceeding  from  the  Father,  and  to  be  wor- 
shipped and  glorified  with  the  Father  and  the  Son." 
Epiphanius  and  Augustine,  representative  of  the  West,  on 
the  other  hand,  derived  the  Spirit  "  from  the  Father  and 
from  the  Son,"  filioque.  In  589,  at  Toledo,  this  Filioque 
was  added  to  the  confession,  and  the  refusal  of  the  Eastern 
Church  to  adopt  it  sundered  the  Churches.  The  separation 
did  not  take  place  formally  till  after  the  time  of  John  of 
Damascus  (750),  but  he  was  the  last  Easterner  to  be  heard 
with  respect  in  the  West. 

After  the  Second  Nicean  Council  (the  seventh  ecumeni- 
cal council)  in  787,  the  Greek  Church  (officially  the  Holy 
Eastern  Orthodox  Catholic  Apostolic  Church)  went  its  own 
way.  Intellectually  it  did  not  go  far,  though  geographically 
it  extended  itself  over  Bulgaria  in  the  ninth  and  Russia  in 
the  tenth  centuries.  But  the  new  problems  of  the  West  did 
not  affect  it ;  it  had  no  reforms,  only  schisms  on  metaphysi- 
cal grounds  (above).  It  attached  itself  to  symbols  and 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        569 

mysteries,  shows  and  ceremonies,  and  divided  itself  into 
bodies  under  different  jurisdictions  ruled  by  Patriarchs  and 
local  synods.1 

The  chief  difference  between  the  Eastern  and  Western 
Churches,  besides  the  theological  dispute,  is  that  the  East 
cared  little  for  the  question  of  redemption.  It  conceived  it 
as  a  means  of  freeing  the  soul  from  death,  not  from  sin,  and 
never  advanced  beyond  apostolic  thought.  As  compared 
with  the  subjective  practical  religion  of  Rome,  it  is  meta- 
physical and  very  ritualistic.  Sculpture  and  organs  it  ta- 
boos, but  pictures  it  adores  (literally).  It  has  threefold 
immersion,  infant  communion,  anoints  with  oil  (but  not  for 
extreme  unction),  has  communion  sub  utraque  (in  both 
kinds)  and  leavened  bread,  exalts  the  cross  and  forbids  the 
crucifix.2  The  non-clerical  character  of  the  monastic  or- 
ders is  that  of  the  early  Western  Church.  Prayer  is  made 
standing  in  an  eastern  direction,  as  in  the  apostolic  Church. 
Absolution  is  given  with  the  words  (used  also  by  the  Wal- 
denses)  "  may  God  forgive  thee."  The  Eastern  Church  has 
its  own  Bible  and  the  Catechism  of  Philaret  (1839)  is  the 
chief  manual  of  belief.  On  the  whole,  this  Church  has  re- 
mained Hellenic  in  spirit,  a  divine  mystery-religion,  pre- 
occupied with  the  occult,  delighted  with  spectacles,  super- 
stitious, not  inimical  to  the  flesh,  sensuously  serene,  not 
spiritually  stirred.3  An  attempt  was  made  in  the  fifteenth 
century  to  effect  a  reunion  with  the  Western  Church.  This 
was  accomplished  in  form  only  and  the  new  union  soon  dis- 
solved under  political  pressure. 

1  Some  of  the  national  schismatic  churches  have  as  rivals  United 
Churches,  Greek,  Nestorian,  Armenian,  Syrian,  Coptic,  Abyssinian, 
which  are  partly  Roman,  accepting  the  Filioque  and  submitting  to 
the  Roman  pope,  though  they  retain  clerogamy  (except  for  monks 
and   bishops)    and   communion   in   both   kinds.    They   are   modern 
(fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries).     Of  the  National  Syrian  Jacob- 
ites (of  451)  and  Marionites  (of  680),  the  latter  have  become  sub- 
ject to  the  Roman  pope    (in  the  East  papa  or  pope  is  a  general 
priestly  title). 

2  The  cross  appeared  as  a  symbol  in  the  Western  Church  (Cata- 
combs)  in  the  third  century,  the  crucifix  not  till  the  seventh. 

3  Yet  it  has  developed  pietistic  sects  like  the  Doukhabors.    It  also 


57°  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

The  Roman  Church  had  gradually  built  up  its  power  at 
Rome  itself.  As  early  as  190,  Pope  Victor,  who,  like  Tertul- 
lian,  used  Latin,  high-handedly  excommunicated  the  whole 
Eastern  Church  because  it  would  not  celebrate  Easter  on 
the  Sunday  after  the  Paschal  full  moon,  though  Eastern 
delegates  urged  that  they  followed  the  Apostle  John  in 
celebrating  it  on  I4th  Nisan  (Passover).  But  Rome,  fol- 
lowing authority  in  faith,  followed  the  Roman  way  in  forms. 
It  made  the  ceremonial  of  old  Rome  its  own,  adapting  its 
religious  processions,  its  feast-days,  etc.,  or  did  as  it  chose. 
Because  more  convenient  than  the  apostolic  custom,  it  made 
Easter  come  on  Sunday ;  because  inconvenient,  in  another 
sense,  it  did  away  with  the  apostolic  Love-feast.  It  ruled 
as  it  would.  The  coercive  policy  became  its  settled  method 
from  the  third  century  when  it  became  Latin.  It  conceived 
of  itself  Jewishly  as  a  community  ruled  by  God's  delegates 
through  law,  whereas  the  Eastern  Church  conceived  of  it- 
self not  as  a  body  receiving  doctrines  and  sacraments  but 
as  the  soul  of  the  world,  consisting  of  members  that  were 
individual  elect  souls. 

Its  spirit  was  saved  not  from  within  but  from  without. 
Africa  gave  it  the  fiery  Tertullian  (above)  and  the  same 
land  gave  it  Augustine.  But  Africa  gave  it  also  Cyprian 
of  Carthage  (d.  258),  who  laid  the  ecclesiastical  framework 
of  the  Church  by  developing  the  prestige  of  the  bishop,  as 
representative  of  God,  having  the  authority  of  Christ,  who 
as  a  priest  offered  himself  in  sacrifice.  That  sacrifice  the 
bishop  repeats  when  he  celebrates  the  sacrament  of  the 
eucharist.  Rome  accepted  this  doctrine  gladly,  as  she  had 
accepted  the  teaching  of  Tertullian  (though  otherwise  she 
rated  him  a  heretic),  that  all  culture  before  Christ  was 
sinful;1  that  the  Church  had  received  faith  as  its  property 

conceals  survivals  of  old  Cybele-worship  among  the  more  illiterate 
masses. 

1  Tn  the  East,  Marcion  (above)  also  held  that  even  Judaism  was 
not  the  work  of  a  good  God.  In  general,  however,  the  East  took  a 
more  liberal  view  and  regarded  all  previous  religions  as  preparatory 
to  Christianity  and  thus  containing  elements  of  truth. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        571 

(as  Irenaeus  said,  "  a  deposit ")  ;  that  heresy  was  only  self- 
will. 

Augustine  (354-430),  the  constructive  mind  of  the  West- 
ern Church,  established  the  Roman  Church  on  a  firm  founda- 
tion. In  regard  to  the  Arian  question,  he  accepted,  as  did 
the  whole  later  Church,  Roman  and  Protestant,  the  Nicean 
theology  and  the  Chalcedonian  Christology.  Yet,  like  the 
Rome  of  old,  he  was  not  much  interested  in  abstractions ; 
his  work  lay  in  practical  theology,  in  the  relation  between 
God  and  man  rather  than  the  relation  between  God  and 
Christ.  But  in  one  utterance  he  presents  an  interesting 
parallel  to  the  greatest  of  India's  early  theologians  who 
(c.  600  B.  c.)  said  that  Brahma  could  be  defined  only  by 
No,  No  (by  negations).  "If  asked  to  define  the  trinity/' 
says  Augustine,  "  we  can  say  only  that  it  is  Not  this  and 
Not  that."  John  of  Damascus  echoes  this :  "  All  that  we 
can  know  of  the  divine  nature  is  that  it  is  not  to  be  known  " 
(this  appears  to  revert  to  Plotinus). 

Following  Arnobius  (c.  290),  who  degraded  man  to  exalt 
God,  and  taught  that  only  some  souls  are  saved  (because 
immortal),  Augustine  explained  his  doctrine  of  original  sin, 
grace,  and  predestination.  He  was  at  first,  in  Africa,  a 
disciple  of  the  Manichaeans,  whose  principles  were  later 
taken  up  by  the  Albigenses  or  Cathari  in  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury. He  was  influenced  first  by  Neo-Platonism  and  then 
by  Bishop  Ambrose  (who  became  bishop  without  having 
been  a  priest)  of  Milan,  where  Augustine  became  Professor 
of  Rhetoric.  His  chief  works  were  directed  against  the 
Manichaeans ;  against  Pelagius,  who  proclaimed  salvation 
by  faith  and  declared  that  all  men  are  born  sinless ;  and 
against  Donatus,  founder  of  a  sectarian  African  church, 
(which  lasted  for  two  centuries),  who  demanded  that  the 
Church  separate  itself  from  the  world,  and  taught  that  a 
Christian  must  have  a  personal  experience  of  religion  and 
need  not  belong  to  the  Roman  Church.  Donatus  was  se- 
vere on  apostates  weakened  by  persecution ;  in  his  views  he 
was  supported  to  some  extent  by  Novatian  at  Rome. 


572  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Although  Augustine  knew  little  Greek  and  no  Hebrew,1 
yet  his  eloquence  and  constructive  imagination  established 
the  dogmatic  leadership  of  the  Roman  Church.  His  famous 
treatise,  The  City  of  God  (De  Civitate  Dei),  was  written 
in  426.  His  sister  founded  the  order  of  Augustinian  nuns, 
but  the  monks  of  his  name,  to  whose  order  Luther  belonged, 
were  a  later  mediaeval  body.  His  theory  of  predestination 
is  the  product  of  a  legal  Roman  mind,  and  it  is  significant 
that  it  made  no  impression  on  the  Church  till  it  was  revived 
and  systematized  by  Anselm  and  Calvin,  both  of  whom 
were  bred  to  legal  study.  His  attitude  is  genuinely  old 
Roman,  a  business  or  legal  attitude,  concerned  with  ad- 
justing relations  in  a  case  where  there  is  a  guilty  party  and 
a  plaintiff.  In  the  course  of  his  De  Civitate  Dei,  Augustine 
shows  that  human  empires  wane  (the  Goths  captured  Rome 
in  410),  but  God's  empire  grows  as  the  other  fails;  this 
divine  empire  is  the  (Roman)  Church.  This  attitude  be- 
came that  of  the  Church  itself  when,  in  380,  an  edict  of 
Theodosius  made  Roman  faith  the  test  of  orthodoxy,  and 
when,  in  445,  Emperor  Valerian  recognized  the  Roman  Pope 
as  head  of  the  Church.2 

There  was  no  early  consensus  as  to  redemption  and 
grace.  The  Gnostics  held  that  man  is  sinful  by  nature,  as 
is  all  creation,  but  the  early  Fathers  said  that  man  was  a  free 
moral  agent,  till  Pelagius  "  was  permitted  to  speak  falsely 
that  the  Fathers  might  learn  to  speak  rightly."  Justin, 
Clement,  and  Origen  were  content  to  say  that  God  helps 
him  whose  soul  inclines  to  will  aright  (will  is  here  a  func- 
tion of  the  soul).  Original  sin  is  not  really  sin,  but  an  in- 
herited disease,  which  inclines  to  the  wrong :  "  Sinless  at 

1  He  used  the  Latin  texts  of  which  there  were  several  before 
Jerome,  whose  (Vulgate)   version   (384-400)   supplanted  all  others. 
Cyprian  (c.  250)  already  cites  Latin  texts  of  the  Bible. 

2  Chrysostom,  who  was  banished  from  his  office  at  Constantinople 
by  the  Chalcedon  Council  in  403  and   died  in  407,  recognized   the 
Bishop  of  Rome  as   Peter's   successor  "  in  primacy  of  honour  but 
not  supremacy  of  jurisdiction."    This  reflects  the  general  Eastern 
view  of  Rome.     Chrysostom,  like  Nestorius,  promoted  missions  but 
^opposed  "  Mariolatry,"  though  he  favoured  the  veneration  of  saints. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        573 

birth,  we  sin  from  choice."  Thus  too  the  Antioch  school: 
"  None  sins  through  another's  sin." 1  So  Chrysostom : 
"  When  man  chooses  well,  God  co-operates."  The  soul, 
created  in  each  instance,  is  not  propagated ;  its  action  is 
its  own;  its  connexion  with  Adam  is  not  immediate  but 
through  the  flesh,  mediate;  hence  infants  are  born  guilt- 
less. 

But  here  a  word  as  to  the  soul's  pre-existence  is  needed. 
That  the  intellectual  preceded  the  material,  that  souls  came 
before  bodies,  was  the  view  of  the  Essenes,  of  Origen,  and 
of  all  those  who  regarded  a  body  as  a  punishment  for  sin :  all 
souls  were  created  once  for  all  in  the  beginning.  This  was 
derided  by  Jerome  and  Augustine,  and  was  a  view  obsolete 
by  the  end  of  the  fourth  century.  The  opposed  theory,  that 
each  soul  is  created  at  birth  (see  Zech.  xii.  i),  prevailed 
in  the  East  and  had  adherents  in  the  West.  "  God,"  says 
Jerome,  "  fabricates  souls  daily."  Every  man's  body  is  de- 
rived from  Adam ;  his  soul  comes  straight  from  God.  But 
against  this  theory,  Tertullian  advanced  still  another,  and  it 
is  this  which  in  the  West  soon  became  the  working  hypothe- 
sis of  its  anthropology,  viz.,  body  and  soul  are  both  propa- 
gated. God  has  done  nothing  since  he  rested  on  the  sev- 
enth day.  The  soul  of  Adam  was  created  holy ;  but  in  Adam 
it  sinned  and  today  man  inherits  that  sinful  soul,  as  he  does 
that  mortal  body,  which  Adam  transmitted.  In  461,  Leo  the 
Great  declared  that  "  every  man  is  formed  soul  and  body  in 
the  womb,  and  this  is  the  Catholic  belief."  In  a  letter  to 
Jerome,  Augustine  says  he  does  not  know  certainly  about 
this  matter  (his  De  Anima  is  against  creationism)  ;  but  his 
theory  of  predestination  seems  to  imply  that  he  holds  the 
soul  as  descended  from  Adam  and  tainted  by  his  sin.  The 
later  Church  reverted  to  creationism,  as  less  materializing; 
but  Luther  revived  the  Tertullian  "  traducianism,"  as  best 

1  Compare  the  Karma  doctrine,  which  insists  on  the  same  point. 
A  further  interesting  parallel  is  that  between  the  Buddhist  "thirst" 
or  desire  as  originating  evil  and  the  Christian  source  in  eiridvpla, 
desire  ("concupiscence").  There  is  of  course  no  historical  con- 
nection. 


574  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

explaining  original  sin.  Calvin,  however,  remained  a  cre- 
ationist.1 

That  the  soul  is  born  sinful,  is  the  view  of  Cyprian, 
Ambrose,  and  Hilary  (third  and  fourth  centuries).  Augus- 
tine, whose  own  spiritual  struggles  had  shown  him  that  the 
will  itself  is  perverse  and  is  determined  by  the  state  of  the 
soul  ("immanent  determinism"),  gradually  gave  up  the 
view  that  God  co-operates  (synergism)  and  decided  that 
the  Holy  Spirit  must  do  all,  even  renovate  the  will  (mon- 
ergism)  ;  hence  faith  is  a  gift  of  God  and,  since  faith  is 
necessary  to  salvation,  only  they  whom  God  elects  are 
saved.  Original  sin  must  first  of  all  be  erased  by  baptism ; 
the  unbaptized,  even  infants,  are  damned ;  all  pagans  are 
damned ;  what  is  not  of  faith  is  sin ;  ergo,  even  old  Roman 
virtues  are  really  all  sins  (De  Cimtate  Dei). 

Pelagius,  an  "  indeterminist,"  taught,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  sin  is  due  to  temptation  and  example,  not  to  inheritance. 
Grace  remits  sin;  regeneration  comes  from  illumination  of 
the  intellect  by  truth.  What  is  called  Semi-Pelagianism 
holds  that  evil  but  not  guilt  is  inherited ;  it  upholds  a  com- 
bination of  free-will  and  grace.  This  Semi-Pelagianism, 
after  being  sanctioned  by  the  Councils  of  Aries  and  Lyons 
in  475,  was  adopted  by  the  Council  of  Trent  in  1545  (with 
synergism)  ;  while  Pelagianism  was  cast  out  as  a  heresy, 
in  416  and  418,  and  even  roused  the  East,  which  promptly 
condemned  it  also,  at  Ephesus,  in  431.  Some  Eastern 
bishops,  however,  sided  with  Pelagius;  some  said  his  view 
was  "  not  essential."  Luther  was  a  stronger  determinist 
than  Calvin.  The  argument  as  to  inherited  guilt  or  in- 
herited evil  was  revived  by  the  controversy  between  Cal- 
vinists  and  the  Semi-Pelagian  Arminians  (the  followers  of 
one  Hermann).  The  Semi-Pelagian  theory  of  inherited 
evil  has  modified  the  Calvinism  of  the  English  Church. 

Augustine's  unrelenting  logic  took  up  also  the  relation 
between  God's  justice  and  mercy,  which  later  troubled  the 

1  In  America,  traducianism  was  taught  by  Jonathan  Edwards  and 
Samuel  Hopkins. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        575 

Mohammedans.  To  a  Christian  the  problem  expresses  it- 
self thus:  How  are  infinite  mercy  and  infinite  justice  cor- 
related, and  how  is  justice  satisfied  by  Christ's  suffering? 
As  already  remarked,  expiation  did  not  trouble  the  Jewish 
Christians;  to  them,  repentance  and  righteousness  made 
atonement.  Other  early  believers  (or  unbelievers)  as- 
sumed, with  Marcion,  that  divine  suffering  was  apparent 
only  and  hence  was  not  expiatory;  or,  with  Basilides,  that 
Christ's  suffering  was  human  only  and  hence  finite,  and 
therefore  not  vicarious.  Ignatius  and  Polycarp,  reputed 
pupils  of  John,  merely  repeat  Scripture  (Christ  died  for 
our  sins)  ;  Barnabas  and  Clement,  reputed  pupils  of  Paul, 
say  that  "the  [Christ's]  soul  is  given  for  man's  soul." 
That  is,  a  ransom  is  paid ;  but  from  what  ?  Irenaeus  says 
bluntly,  "  from  the  devil."  Origen  goes  a  step  further  and 
says  the  ransom  is  paid  to  the  devil.  Gregory  of  Nazianzus 
knows  of  this  theory  (390),  but  he  questions  its  correct- 
ness ;  Christ  suffers,  not  to  pay  Satan  but  to  satisfy  God.1 

But  Augustine  has  no  hesitation  in  saying :  "  It  would 
have  been  unjust  if  Satan  had  not  had  the  right  to  rule  over 
his  captive  (man)."  On  the  other  hand,  both  Gregory  the 
Great  and  John  of  Damascus  say  that  atonement  is  paid  to 
God  and  not  to  the  devil.  Here  the  subject  was  dropped, 
for  the  Church  trusted  rather  to  justification  through  works, 
till  the  almost  Protestant  "  Bishop  of  Canterbury,"  Anselm, 
in  his  Cur  Deus  Homo  (1035-1109)  reasoned  the  matter 
out  on  the  basis  of  Roman  law :  God  has  been  robbed  and 
must  be  reimbursed.  Satan's  claim  is  denied.  God's  jus- 
tice must  be  satisfied.  It  is  God's  compassion  for  man  that 
leads  to  the  sacrifice,  through  which  alone  justice  can  be 
satisfied. 

But  the  Church  preferred  the  theory  of  Abelard  and 
Lombard  (1164)  :  Christ's  suffering  conjoined  with  baptism 

1This  Gregory  recognizes  purification  by  fire,  which  under  Greg- 
ory the  Great  (c.  600)  assumes  the  form  of  Purgatory,  with  deliv- 
erance therefrom  through  intercessory  prayers  and  masses.  The 
early  church  of  Rome  has  no  purgatory;  the  believer  expects  to 
go  immediately  to  God, 


576  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

and  penance  gives  remission  of  sin.  Thomas  Aquinas 
(1270),  agreeing  with  Bonaventura,  though  the  latter  was 
not  uninfluenced  by  Anselm,  says  that  if  God  sees  fit  to 
remit  sin,  it  is  not  "  unjust  "  for  him  to  do  so ;  God  is  above 
legal  satisfaction.  The  Christian  soul,  member  of  the 
Church,  which  is  one  with  Christ,  can  partly  redeem  itself 
(through  works  of  supererogation),  as  Christ  himself  not 
only  satisfies  justice  but  adds  merit  to  the  redeemed.  This 
view  has  remained  that  of  the  Roman  Church ;  baptism, 
character,  good  works,  conformity  to  law  are  items  tending 
to  remission  of  sins  (so  the  Council  of  Trent,  1 545-1563 ).1 
This  discussion  has  anticipated  the  progress  of  the  Church 
along  other  lines.  In  the  first  Christian  era,  Chiliasm,  the 
expectation  of  Christ's  near  advent  to  reign  a  thousand 
years  before  the  last  day,  had  led  many  devout  souls  to 
become  ascetic.  Ready  for  Christ,  they  renounced  the 
world  and,  sometimes,  imitating  earlier  pagan  associations, 
collected  in  coenobite  colonies.  By  the  fourth  century  most 
of  the  Fathers  had  renounced  all  hope  of  Christ's  speedy 
advent  (Eusebius  calls  it  a  fable)  ;2  but  the  monastic  prac- 
tice had  already  been  regulated  by  Basil  the  Great  (d.  379), 
who  laid  the  foundation  of  Eastern  monachism  in  Cappa- 
docia.  Athanasius,  it  is  said,  brought  the  idea  to  the  West. 
By  the  fifth  century,  there  were  monasteries  in  Italy,  Africa, 
and  Gaul.  The  first  well  regulated  order  was  that  of  the 
Benedictines  (529),  whose  regulations  were  adopted  by 
others.  Personal  salvation  was  the  aim  of  these  passive 
saints,  who  were  lay  brothers,  till  Gregory  the  Great  con- 
verted them  into  active  priestly  missionaries.  Cassiodorus 
at  Vivarium  at  the  same  time  (i.  e.  600)  made  their  home 
a  seminary  of  learning.  But,  till  910,  they  were  not  under 

^Protestants  think  that  this  "confuses  sanctification  with  justifi- 
cation." See  Luther's  view,  below.  Some  early  Christians  ( second 
century)  held  that  the  eucharist  was  mystically  "the  medicine  of 
immortality." 

2  It  was  revived  in  the  year  1000  and  later  by  the  Anabaptists ; 
also  by  the  Millerites  and  other  distraught  sects  crying :  "  the  day  is 
at  hand ;  prepare  to  meet  thy  God." 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        577 

papal  jurisdiction,  and  being  uncontrolled  they  became  more 
or  less  corrupt.  Yet  they  were  by  no  means  idle  or  vicious 
bodies.  The  Cluny  reform  then  incorporated  monastic  op- 
position to  simony,  to  clerical  marriage,  and  to  papal  elec- 
tion by  party  politics  (the  Cluny  movement  forced  the  elec- 
tion by  cardinals).  A  century  before,  monks  had  brought 
Christianity  to  Germany.  The  reform  movement  also  ex- 
pressed itself  in  new  orders.  Bernhard's  Cistertians  were 
such  a  reformed  Benedictine  order  (eleventh  century). 
The  armies  of  the  Church,  the  Knights  Templar,  etc.,  were 
formed  at  this  time.  From  the  last  quarter  of  the  ninth  to 
the  second  half  of  the  eleventh  century,  the  Church  was  con- 
trolled by  the  corrupt  aristocracy  of  Rome;  but  when  it 
shook  itself  free,  there  sprang  up  the  reformatory  orders  of 
mendicant  friars,  the  Franciscans  (1209),  and  Dominicans 
(1215).  They  followed  the  life  of  Jesus  as  imitated  by  that 
mystical  saint,  Francis  of  Assisi  (d.  1226),  who  bore  on  his 
body  the  stigmata  of  Christ  and  in  his  heart  the  desire  to  be 
like  his  Lord.  This  desire  was  expressed  by  vows  of  hu- 
mility, poverty,  love,  devotion,  and  obedience.  These  friars 
in  their  first  estate  were  the  great  missionaries  of  their  time 
and  their  reformation  lasted  till  what  is  known  as  the  Refor- 
mation was  well-nigh  at  hand. 

But,  between  them  and  the  Protestant  era,  came  the  four- 
teenth century,  when  the  Church  was  rent  to  its  foundation, 
for  the  papal  throne  was  claimed  by  two  Popes  whose  mutual 
anathemas  shocked  the  world.  Then  spirituality  seemed  to 
have  left  the  Church.  Boccaccio  and  Dante  show  that  the 
ecclesiastic,  bishop,  priest,  monk,  or  friar,  was  often  synony- 
mous with  crime,  meanness,  and  lust.  Yet,  before  entering 
upon  this  topic,  to  trace  the  Church  orders  a  little  further, 
the  Reformation  itself  produced  one  of  the  most  important, 
that  of  Ignatius  Loyola  (1534),  whose  Society  of  Jesus 
dedicated  itself  to  the  service  of  the  Church  absolutely, 
and  whose  missionaries  with  wonderful  devotion  laid  the 
principles  of  Christianity  before  the  new  and  savage  world 
of  America,  as  well  as  before  the  ancient  civilization  of  the 


578  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

East.1  Another  result  of  the  Reformation  was  the  forma- 
tion, within  the  Church,  of  the  Augustinian  party  called 
Jansenists.  Jansen  (1585-1638)  contended  against  the 
Jesuits  at  Louvain.  His  sect  was  expelled  from  France  by 
Louis  XV;  but  it  still  forms  a  schismatic  Netherland 
Church.  Jansen's  Augustinus,  which  was  published  in  1640, 
denies  free  will. 

During  the  period  just  reviewed  the  Church  was  intel- 
lectually alert.  Its  formal  philosophy,  though  hampered 
by  orthodox  requirements,  was  subtle.  But  the  most  im^ 
portant  movement  in  it  passed  without  appreciation  of  its 
significance.  This  was  when,  after  Anselm  had  enunciated 
his  credo  ut  intelligam  (dogmatic  truth  must  be  made  intel- 
ligible), Thomas  Aquinas,  a  Dominican,  and  Duns  Scotus,  a 
Franciscan,  founded  two  schools,  in  which  understanding 
and  will  were  respectively  made  the  highest  principle. 
Therewith  the  former  union  of  faith  and  knowledge  was 
broken.  At  the  same  time  the  identity  of  thought  and  being 
was  investigated.  The  Nominalists,  of  the  eleventh  century, 
denied  reality  to  concepts ;  while  Anselm  and  other  Realists 
held  to  the  old  Universalia  ante  rent.2  The  goal  was  then 
sought  through  pantheism  and  mysticism.  Scotus  Erigena, 
in  the  ninth,  and  Eckhardt  and  Bernhard,  in  the  twelfth 

1  That  Jesuitical  and  Jesuit  have  become  Protestant  terms  of 
reproach  is  due  to  three  reasons.  Devotion  to  the  Church  involves 
obedience  to  it  expressed  by  complete  service,  including  sacrifice,  of 
one's  own  personality;  higher  truth  must  be  served  even  by  evasion 
or  untruth.  To  this  ethics,  corporate  good  is  supreme.  Second, 
liberal  politics  in  England  opposed  the  Stuarts  supported  by  the 
Jesuits,  who  thus  became  odious  to  the  Commonwealth  party. 
Third,  Jesuits  are  often  supposed  to  have  invented  the  horrors  of 
the  Inquisition,  which  was  really  invented  in  1232  to  enforce  the 
prohibition,  of  three  years  before,  against  the  laity  reading  the 
Bible.  Again,  an  Alva  was  merely  a  political  agent.  To  balance 
Jesuit  errors  (many  of  them  those  of  their  day),  the  historian  in 
his  general  estimate  should  weigh  the  life  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers 
among  our  Redskins,  for  example;  their  heroic  courage,  their  fre- 
quent martyrdom;  and,  from  a  human  point  of  view,  the  unrivalled 
work  they  have  done  for  the  history  of  religions. 

2  Abelard,  who  was  condemned  by  the  Church  as  a  rationalist  in 
1 121  and  1140,  held  a  middle  view,  Universalia  in  re.  His  answer 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        579 

century,  had  been  respectively  precursors  of  these  two 
doctrines,  which  were  revived  by  the  pantheist  Giordano 
Bruno  and  the  mystic  Jacob  Boehme  (sixteenth  century). 

Herewith  closes  the  period  of  Church-philosophy.  In  the 
seventeenth  century,  Descartes  assumed  as  the  foundation 
of  his  philosophy  not  orthodoxy  but  doubt,  and  Spinoza's 
affirmation  of  the  reality  of  a  knowledge  of  things  was 
based  on  the  veracity  of  God  as  known  through  man's  in- 
nate idea  of  the  perfect.  Thereafter,  philosophy  might,  or 
might  not,  support  the  Church.  It  was  no  longer  the 
nursling  of  religion. 

Both  Bernhard,  who  held  that  faith,  though  an  intuition 
of  truth,  is  based  on  authority,  as  science  is  based  on  rea- 
son, and  Anselm,  who  invented  the  topic  called  Evidences,1 
were  influential  in  furthering  that  veneration  for  the  Mother 
of  God  which  is  often  called  Mariolatry.  Nestorius,  in  431, 
was  condemned  for  his  attitude  toward  this  revered  Mother, 
the  only  mortal  born  sinless  and  going  direct  to  God,  as  the 
Fathers  taught.  Intense  excitement  was  aroused  in  the 
Eastern  Church  by  Nestorius'  repudiation  of  Mariolatry. 
The  priests  who  had  defended  the  "  Mother  of  God  "  in  the 
controversy  were  escorted  home  by  a  tumultuous  mob  of 
enthusiasts.  Devotion  to  her  in  the  West  was  of  later 
growth,  but  in  the  thirteenth  century  they  that  neglected 
her  were  fined  and  in  1854  Pius  IX  promulgated  the  doc- 
trine that  Mary  was  immaculately  conceived.  But  her  wor- 

to  credo  ut  intelligam  was  Non  credendum  nisi  prius  intellectum. 
Occam,  who  opposed  papal  control  of  the  State  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  revived  Nominalism,  but  after  him  the  identity  of  thought 
and  being  was  no  longer  urged  in  its  scholastic  form. 

1  The  Fathers'  evidence  (of  God's  existence)  was  either  based  on 
teleology  or  on  the  subjective  effect  of  his  presence;  divinity  in 
Augustine's  phrase,  "  impinges  on  the  soul";  God  is  known  by  being 
experienced;  we  know  he  exists  because  we  love  him.  Formal 
ontology  appears  first  in  Anselm's  argument  (1033-1109)  :  The 
mind  possesses  the  idea  of  God  as  a  perfect  being ;  hence  such  a 
being  exists.  For  a  being  who  may  not  exist  is  not  most  perfect 
and  a  necessarily  existent  being  cannot  be  conceived  as  not  existent ; 
hence  the  mind  conceiving  of  a  perfect  being  must  conceive  of  a 
real  being. 


580  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

ship  is  not  permitted,  only  "  hyperdoulia,"  or  great  vener- 
ation, higher  than  the  doulia  paid  to  a  saint,  to  whom  also 
one  does  not  pray,  but  cries  ora  pro  nobis,  pray  for  us. 
Early  veneration  is  shown  by  the  remains  in  the  catacombs. 
There  Mary  with  the  child  in  her  lap  appears  as  early  as  the 
first  and  second  centuries.  The  accepted  type  of  the  Mother 
of  God  may  have  been  of  Egyptian  origin  (Isis). 

The  first  case  of  "  intercession  of  saints  "  is  found  c.  200 
in  the  Gnostic  Acts  of  Paul  and  Thecla,  cited  by  Tertullian.1 
Formal  canonization  was  at  first  a  sensible  safeguard  against 
a  multiplicity  of  doubtful  saints.  As  it  was,  the  Church 
inadvertently  canonized  Buddha  (St.  Josaphat).  A  few 
popes  have  been  canonized,  among  them  Pius  V,  who  ex- 
communicated Queen  Elizabeth.  But  most  of  the  Roman 
saints  are  worthy  Christians,  apostles,  the  early  Fathers 
(except  those  incapacitated  by  heresy  or  other  blemishes, 
like  Tertullian  and  Origen)  and  later  worthies  credited  with 
piety  and  miracles,  either  in  person  or  through  relics.  They 
have  a  vision  of  God  and  intercourse  with  God,  according  to 
Origen  and  Justin;  they  wear  aureoles,  says  Aquinas,  in- 
stead of  common  gold  crowns.2  The  nimbus  occurs  first  in 
the  third  century  pictures  of  Christ ;  by  the  fifth  century  it 
adorns  any  saint.  It  may  have  come,  in  the  first  instance, 
from  the  head-shield  of  Greek  statues. 

The  veneration  of  images,  prohibited  in  the  Eastern, 
Church,  has  been  practised  since  the  fifth  century  and  prob- 
ably before  that.  Many  old  divinities  of  Greece  have  be- 
come, as  images,  converted  into  Christian  objects  of  venera- 
tion. Gregory  the  Great  censured  the  Bishop  of  Marseilles 
for  having  defaced  the  images  in  his  diocese  (c.  600),  which 
shows  that  official  opinion  was  not  uniform.  In  1563,  the 
Church  declared  that  images  were  only  mnemonic,  reminders 

1  Prayers    to    martyrs    occur    as    early    as    the    fourth    century. 
Augustine  recognizes  prayers  for  the  dead.     It  is  of  interest  to  see 
that  in  his  day  it  was  a  novelty  to  sing  psalms  in  church. 

2  Aquinas'  Summa  Theologica  systematized  theological  science  in 
the  thirteenth  century  (Lombard  had  attempted  this  in  the  twelfth). 
Aquinas'  work  was  endorsed  by  the  Pope  in  1879. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY       581 

of  piety.  Reformed  churches  now  employ  them  for  this 
purpose. 

All  Christian  creeds  agree  in  making  the  lives  of  the  good 
eternal  in  heaven ;  but  Christians  differ  as  to  a  probationary 
period  and  as  to  eternal  damnation.  Augustine,  who  speaks 
of  a  "secret  receptacle"  of  souls  (purgatorial),  postulates 
an  aionian  fate  for  the  damned,  as  did  Calvin  (Matt.  xxv. 
41).  Origen  speaks  of  eternal  punishment,  yet  not  as  a 
reality,  for  man  can  free  himself,  but  as  a  beneficial  decep- 
tion of  God  (to  induce  good  behaviour).  Annihilation  of 
sinners  was  taught  by  Arnobius.  Hell,  in  mediaeval  the- 
ology, lies  remote  from  heaven.  Next  to  hell  is  purgatory ; 
next  to  that,  the  limbus  infantum,  who  die  unbaptized ;  next 
to  that,  the  limbus  patrum,  where  Christ  went  to  preach  to 
those  in  bondage,  the  abode  of  Old  Testament  saints  (also 
called  the  Bosom  of  Abraham).1 

The  Roman  Church  extended  the  sacramental  idea,  from 
baptism  and  the  Last  Supper,  to  include  confirmation,  pen- 
ance, extreme  unction,  ordination,  and  marriage.  Only  for 
the  ordained  priest  does  God  change  the  bread  and  wine 
into  the  eucharist  as  a  sacrifice.  Jesus  was  himself  bap- 
tized but  did  not  baptize.  Both  the  original  sacraments 
have  been  traced  by  comparative  study  to  magical  ideas. 
Baptism,  as  we  have  seen,  is  magic  lustration  practised  by 
many  races  to  expel  demons  or  evil.  Baptism  "  in  the 
Name  "  reverts  to  the  hypostasis  of  the  Name,  of  one  whose 
power  is  thereby  conveyed  to  the  one  baptized.  It  purifies 
from  sickness  as  well  as  from  sin,  as  does  oil,  used  to  keep 
off  sickness  and  other  devils  in  life  after  death.  Even  in 
the  fifth  century,  baptism  was  a  medicine  for  disease.  Bap- 
tism to  wash  away  sin  and  as  a  symbol  of  the  resurrection 
is,  says  Tertullian,  a  Mithra-rite  inspired  by  the  devil  to 

1  Luther  favoured  more  than  did  Calvin  an  intermediate  state 
after  death  and  this  view  was  received  and  extended  by  Sweden- 
borg.  There  has  been  no  consensus  as  to  what  sort  of  body  would 
rise  again.  According  to  Aquinas,  it  will  be  like  the  earthly  body, 
but  it  will  "move  faster."  The  whole  subject  was  matter  of  opin- 
ion not  of  dogma. 


582  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

mock  Christianity.  The  Name  gives  the  power  of  the  di- 
vinity invoked.  Lustrating  water  and  Name  together  are 
irresistible  against  devil  and  evil. 

So  of  the  Supper,  Justin  tells  us  that  bread  and  a  cup  of 
water  (the  early  Christians  used  either  water  or  wine; 
Paul  speaks  of  the  cup  only)  made  part  of  the  Mithra 
ritual,  which  bread  signifies  immortality.  There  is,  indeed, 
no  doubt  that  the  idea  back  of  these  rites  was  mystical. 
The  eating  of  a  divine  body  is  an  early  communion  which 
makes  the  worshipper  one  with  the  god.  But  the  Church 
spiritualizes.  Augustine  says  that  the  eucharist  contains  a 
spiritual  presence.  The  early  congregation  described  by 
Justin  seems  to  regard  it  as  mnemonic,  others  as  a  means  of 
obtaining  immortality.  As  early  as  the  eighth  century, 
however,  the  Church  of  the  East  regarded  the  eucharist  as 
the  real  body  and  blood.  This  doctrine,  called  transub- 
stantiation  in  1215  by  the  Roman  Church,  was  known  earlier 
than  it  was  named.  In  1050,  Berengarius  was  excommuni- 
cated for  denying  the  real  presence.  In  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, the  Jesuits  proclaimed  the  opus  operatum;  the  sacra- 
ments effect  in  the  penitent  soul  a  disposition  to  grace. 

The  Reformers  differed  as  to  the  eucharist.  Luther 
clung  to  the  Church  doctrine,  as  approved  in  1215,  but 
modified  it  to  consubstantiation,  the  real  presence  is  not  in 
but  with  the  eucharist.  Calvin  explained  that  the  bread  and 
wine  are  not  mere  signs ;  Christ  is  "  truly  and  efficaciously, 
but  not  physically"  present.  Zwingli  (d.  1531)  and  the 
English  reformers,  on  the  other  hand,  maintained  the 
mnemonic  or  symbolic  character  of  the  eucharist. 

That  Paul  was  consciously  bent  on  overcoming  the  pow- 
ers of  evil  is  probably  true,  but  it  may  also  be  true  that  he 
had  at  the  same  time  already  taken  a  higher  view ;  to  him 
baptism  is  not  a  mere  means  of  expelling  a  demon.  As  to 
the  Supper,  Christ  himself  says,  "  Do  this  in  memory 
of  me."  Whatever  the  original  pagan  idea  (and  that  is 
unquestioned),  it  remains  doubtful  whether  even  the  most 
primitive  Christian  idea  had  not  already  left  it  behind.  All 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        583 

historians  admit  that  a  religious  practice  taken  into  a  new 
cult  may  be  without  its  most  primitive  significance,  as  the 
victor's  laurel  no  longer  was  meant  as  a  guard  against 
demons,  though  that  was  the  laurel's  first  use.  To  say  that 
the  principle  of  the  eucharist,  when  first  employed  by  Chris- 
tians, was  one  with  that  which  inspired  the  maenad  to  de- 
vour the  bull-god,  is  to  ignore  relative  values,  because,  ac- 
cording to  Christian  belief,  there  is  no  union  without  pre- 
vious purification,  not  physical  but  spiritual. 

The  Church  from  the  fourth  century  possessed  as  it  were 
a  body  and  a  soul.  Its  body  was  the  huge  establishment 
with  pope,  cardinals,  bishops,  priests,  friars,  wealth  ac- 
quired by  gift  and  trade  (a  crown  exchanged  for  the  "  states 
of  the  church  "  in  the  eighth  century)  —  a  swollen  body  and 
often  in  an  unhealthy  condition.  Its  soul  was  in  that  un- 
dying aspiration  for  a  diviner  state  and  a  purer  life  than 
was  easily  attainable  in  a  body  devoted  to  the  world.  The^ 
lowest  moral  ebbjjf  the  Church  was  when  the  popes  lost 
control  of  it  aluTbecame  creattJTes~ot~the ^Rbman  nobility, 
in  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries.  The  Holy  Roman 
Empire  was  founded  in  962.  Even  materially  there  was  not 
much  gained  by  it,  for  the  king  who  went  barefoot  to 
Canossa  in  1077  afterwards  in  royal  power  got  to  San 
Angelo.  In  fact,  every  union  of  Church  and  State,  papal 
or  protestant,  has  only  helped  to  stifle  the  soul  without 
compensating  advantage  to  the  body,  since  the  persistent 
soul  has  always  disturbed  the  body  by  doing  its  best  to 
escape. 

Sometimes,  however,  it  strove  to  cure  the  body  without 
escaping.  This  was  the  meaning  of  that  earliest  revolt  ex- 
pressed in  Montanus'  revival;  in  the  retreat  of  Benedict's 
monks;  in  the  reform  or  spiritual  outpouring  in  Francis' 
order;  in  the  Council  called  by  Pope  Urban  II  (French  by 
birth),  to  consider  moral  lapses  on  the  part  of  the  king 
(Philip  I  of  France)  ;  in  the  impulse  given  by  the  same 
pope  toward  the  first  Crusade.  For  the  Crusades,  mixed 
as  they  were  with  worldly  aims  (romance,  conquest),  were 


5^4  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

primarily  spiritual  enterprises.  To  approach  Christ,  to  ob- 
tain forgiveness  of  sins,  were  the  underlying  motives  of  this 
mediaeval  revival  inspired  by  Urban  and  fired  by  Peter  the 
Hermit.  Even  Francis  of  Assisi  took  part  in  one  of  the 
later  crusades  (in  1219). 

The  oldest  formal  Protestants  were  the  Waldenses  of 
Lombardy,  supposed  to  derive  from  Waldo  (1173).  With- 
out wishing  to  leave  the  Church  body,  they  longed  to  revive 
its  primitive  piety  and  to  read  the  Bible.  They  proclaime4 
their  own  opinions,  holding  the  intercession  of  saints  as 
naught  and  purgatory  to  be  only  an  earthly  state.  A  little 
later,  in  England,  Wicklif  (1350-1384)  denounced  the 
friars,  called  the  Pope  Antichrist,  demanded  independence, 
opposed  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation,  and  made  his  own 
translation  of  the  Bible.  But,  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
the  Pope,  who  owned  a  papal  residence  at  Avignon,  was 
now  hand  in  glove  with  England's  dearest  foes,  the  French. 
Parliament  already,  in  1366,  had  refused  to  pay  the  papal 
taxes.  Thus  Wicklif  revolted  against  the  political  as  much 
as  against  the  worldly  attitude  of  the  Church.  But,  directly 
influenced  by  him,  Huss  (1369-1415)  began  another  crusade 
against  vice,  venality,  falsehood,  and  other  diseases  of  the 
Church  body,  exposed  doctrinal  errors,  and  left  his  follow- 
ers in  Hungary,  the  Unitas  Fratrum  or  Moravians  (as 
Wicklif  had  left  the  Lollards)  to  uphold  his  reform,  de- 
claring Christ  to  be  the  model  and  accepting  only  the  au- 
thority of  the  Bible,  till  the  new  Reformation  took  up  as 
its  own  these  old  contentions.  Another  primitive  com- 
munity was  that  of  the  Mennonites  (whence  came  those 
who  baptized  only  adults,  mistakenly  called  re-baptizers, 
Anabaptists),  who  opposed  infant  baptism,  would  not  take 
oaths  or  bear  arms,  and  according  to  their  lights  endeavoured 
to  follow  Christ  in  all  things.  Savonarola  (b.  1452),  who 
opposed  the  pope,  but  still  within  the  Church,  and  gave 
his  life  for  reform  before  the  fifteenth  century,  in  his  plea 
for  the  Bible  and  purity  struck  the  very  key-note  of  the 
soon  following  Reformation. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        585 

But  the  body  was  not  responsive  to  the  demands  of  the 
soul.  Hence,  stirred  by  the  abuse  of  indulgences,  whereby 
the  Church  had  prostituted  itself  and  sold  its  most  valuable 
possession  for  worldly  gain,  Martin  Luther  (1483-1546) 
posted  at  last  his  ninety-five  theses,  at  Wittenberg  in  1517, 
and  came  out  openly  against  papal  abuses,  in  restricting  the 
communion  cup,  in  celebrating  mass  as  a  priestly  sacrifice, 
in  confession  and  absolution,  in  monastic  vows  (as  contrary 
to  nature),  and  in  "meritorious  acts/'  as  impugning  the 
complete  validity  of  redemption  without  such  acts. 

In  theology,  the  Protestant  Augsburg  confession  was  Ni- 
cean ;  in  Christology,  it  was  Chalcedonian ;  in  anthropology, 
it  was  Augustinean.  Luther's  strictures  on  the  papal  view 
of  sin  and  grace  also  were  not  his  own  but  followed  those 
of  Erasmus,  who,  as  early  as  1515,  had  called,  too,  for  a 
return  to  the  authority  of  the  Bible.  As  has  been  seen, 
Luther  himself,  an  Augustinian  monk,  still  clung  to  the 
view  of  the  Church  in  regard  to  the  eucharist,  which  he 
hardly  modified  by  the  substitution  of  one  proposition  for 
another.  In  sum,  Luther's  greatness  did  not  consist  in  his 
originality  but  in  his  boldness,  his  moral  courage.  Born  of 
peasants,  himself  rude,  coarse,  and  fearless,  he  was  needed 
as  ethical  regenerator.  Erasmus  was  too  finnicky  a  scholar 
for  the  purpose.  Luther  shook  the  religious  world  into  a 
realization  of  its  needs.  Alexander  VI  had  shown  what  a 
pope  might  be ;  Luther  sought  to  show  what  a  Christian 
ought  to  be.  In  doing  this,  he  worked  hampered  by  many 
limitations,  personal  and  of  the  time.  Nor  was  spirituality 
his  characteristic.  He  dismissed  the  gentle  Melanchthon 
(who  was  also  so  much  of  his  time  as  to  approve  of  burning 
Servetus  at  the  stake)  in  1537  with  the  benediction,  "  May 
God  fill  you  with  hatred  of  the  pope."  This  Teutonic  touch 
expresses,  however,  more  than  the  animus  of  Luther. 
Christian  charity  characterized  none  of  the  Reformers. 
Against  Zwingli,  Luther  was  as  incensed  as  against  the 
pope,  because  the  two  reformers  differed  as  to  the  eucharist, 
and  because  Luther  believed  in  monergism  and  Melanchthon 


586  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

in  synergism,  Luther  felt  that  his  friend  was  not  really  a 
true  Christian. 

But  the  great  drawback  to  Luther's  work  was,  that  in 
shaking  the  religious  world  he  shook  it  to  pieces.  What 
had  been  for  centuries  in  the  West  one  Church,  now  became 
a  mass  of  fragments ;  or  to  speak  in  Biblical  language,  the 
one  flock  became  a  number  of  flocks,  each  penned  in  a 
separate  fold,  and  each  unhappily  regarding  the  occupants 
of  the  other  folds  not  as  fellow-sheep  of  one  shepherd,  but 
as  wolves  disguised  and  herded  by  Satan. 

A  revivalist  tendency  had  been  active  in  Germany  before 
Luther's  day.  Attempts  to  limit  papal  power  were  made  as 
early  as  1409.  Religion  based  on  personal  relation  with 
God  was  not  a  new  idea.  Political  and  social  reform  began 
in  fact  with  the  Renascence.1  What  then  did  Luther  ac- 
complish? First,  he  reinstated,  not  in  theory  but  in  fact, 
Biblical  authority;  then  he  freed  the  soul  of  Christianity 
from  hierarchical,  mediatorial,  monastic  control,  and  re-es- 
tablished as  sacraments  those  of  the  primitive  Church.  For 
Church  belief  and  Church  control  he  substituted  the  simple 
message  that  the  free  grace  of  God  in  Christ  is  what  makes 
guilty  men  blessed;  a  confident  belief  in  God's  grace  suf- 
fices. What  he  disastrously  ignored  was,  that  religious 
fervour  may  legitimately  express  itself  in  emotion,  in  ritual, 
in  the  solemn  ceremony;  that  the  beauty  of  holiness  is  not 
necessarily  embodied  in  ugliness  of  worship.  He  abolished 
fasting,  though  Christ  fasted;  he  abolished  deacons  and 
bishops,  though  they  belong  to  pre-papal  Christianity;  he 
rejected  Roman  control,  only  to  substitute  State-control ;  he 
rejected  "merit"  and  "good  works,"  only  to  find  that  the 
emphasis  on  "  faith  "  resulted  at  once  in  defining  faith  in 

1  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  papal  authority  was  almost  un- 
restricted before  the  Reformation.  In  England,  before  Protestant- 
ism had  been  thought  of,  Henry  VII  and  Wolsey  under  Henry  VIII 
had  confiscated  papal  wealth  and  privileges.  There  was  a  universal 
tendency  to  circumscribe  Church  power.  Lorenzo  de'  Medici  per- 
mitted papal  authority  only  "as  it  seemed  good  to  him,"  nisi  quod 
ei  videretur  nihil  permittens. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        587 

terms  of  scholastic  doctrine  (whence  interminable  quarrels)  ; 
while  to  those  indifferent  to  doctrine  the  crude  statement 
that  good  works  were  naught  led  (the  Antinomians)  to  dis- 
regard of  any  good  work.1 

The  theory  of  relative  necessity  of  atonement  became  an 
Arminian  doctrine  in  the  seventeenth  century.  Its  germ 
may  be  found  in  the  division  between  Aquinas  and  Duns 
Scotus  and  their  followers,  the  Thomasts  and  Scotists,  on 
the  infinite  value  of  Christ's  sufferings.  Scotus,  as  a  Nomi- 
nalist, held  to  a  nominal  satisfaction  of  justice. 

In  regard  to  justification  by  faith,  as  the  judicious  Hooker 
says,  "  Holiness  cannot  be  piacular,"  and  the  Reformers, 
Luther  and  Calvin,  added  to  the  objective  treatment  of 
Anselm  (above)  the  element  of  faith  and  consciousness  of 
redemption,  that  is,  a  work  of  man.  But,  to  guard  against 
error,  the  Reformation  insisted  that  faith  is  not  the  procur- 
ing but  the  instrumental  cause  of  justiiication.  Faith  does 
not  justify  but  accepts  what  justifies.  So  Luther  says: 
"  Faith  and  works  are  inseparably  connected,  but  faith  alone 
without  works  appropriates  atonement  and  thereby  justifies, 
and  yet  faith  does  not  remain  alone"  (works  spontaneously 
follow).  Calvin  agrees  with  this.  Both  of  course  reject 
Anselm's  quaint  mediaeval  view  that  the  number  of  the 
saved  exactly  equals  the  number  of  fallen  angels  and  that 
redemption  was  really  intended  to  keep  up  to  its  full  quota 
the  number  of  pure  spirits.  Later  Lutheran  formulas 
(1576)  stressed  the  difference  between  the  passive  and  active 
obedience  of  Christ;  the  latter,  obedience  to  the  law,  is 
"  imputed  to  us  for  righteousness."  Except  for  the  Ar- 
minian view  of  Grotius,  this  is  still  the  Protestant  position 
in  regard  to  soteriology.  Justification  is  from  God  in  con- 
sequence of  faith ;  free  grace,  without  merit,  is  granted  to 
every  believer  and  is  followed  by  freedom  from  the  law.2 

1  So  the  faith-doctrine  in  India  has  led  to  depreciation  of  all  meri- 
torious works  and  disregard  of  ethics. 

2  Grotius  (1645)  held  the  view,  called  acceptilatio,  of  relative  not 
absolute  necessity   of  atonement.    Vicarious   satisfaction   is   not   in 
this  view  a  quid  pro  quo  but  an  aliud  pro  quo;  the  claim  is  not 


588  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

Intellectually  the  most  influential  Reformer  was  John 
Calvin  (1509-1564),  whose  religion  extended  over  France, 
Switzerland,  Poland,  Hungary,  the  Netherlands,  England, 
Scotland,  and  America,  and  cast  a  gloom  over  three  cen- 
turies. Lutherism  as  a  Church  was  more  local  and  suffered 
the  fate  due  to  its  party  origin  and  scorn  of  emotion.  It 
became  a  State  institution,  markedly  apathetic.  A  Lutheran 
congregation  in  Germany  appears  to  be  spiritually  dead. 
In  the  last  century,  the  Roman  Church  has  in  fact  regained 
much  of  the  religious  and  political  authority  from  which 
Luther  ousted  it.  Calvinism,  a  later  growth,  shook  itself 
more  completely  free  from  the  old  Church  and  landing  in 
England,  at  a  time  when  reform  meant  freedom,  found  a 
soil  wherein  to  propagate  itself  successfully. 

Brought  up  and  educated  under  legal  auspices,  son  of  an 
attorney  and  pupil  of  the  famous  lawyer  Alciati,  Calvin  was 
from  boyhood  severe  and  censorious.  His  mind  was 
shrewd,  logical,  devoid  of  higher  spirituality,  but  religiously 
inclined;  his  body  weak,  nervous,  dyspeptic.  Coming  as  a 
youth  to  Geneva,  he  was  induced  by  the  Protestant  Farel 
to  remain  there  as  pastor.  Expelled  on  account  of  harsh- 
ness, he  returned  (1541)  and  thereafter  ruled  with  an  iron 
hand.  He  was  not  an  original  thinker.  Le  Fevre,  born 
about  1455,  had  denied  "  good  works,"  held  salvation  as  a 
free  gift,  doubted  transubstantiation,  and  taken  the  Bible 
as  sole  authority  five  years  before  Luther  nailed  up  his 
theses.  Farel  was  Le  Fevre's  pupil.  Calvin's  mind,  though 
not  creative,  was  formulative.  His  Institutes,  owing  to  his 
personal  power,  was  formally  voted  by  the  Little  Council 
of  Geneva  to  be  "  the  holy  doctrine  of  God,"  and  at  the 
same  time  (1553)  it  was  commanded  that  "no  one  should 
dare  to  speak  against  the  Institutes."  In  1557  he  banished 
the  Anabaptists  under  fear  of  death.  At  Strassburg  he  re- 
quired every  would-be  communicant  to  be  examined  first 

satisfied  but  waived.  Atonement  is  only  exemplary,  not  to  atone 
for  past  sin  but  to  prevent  future  sin.  Socinus  rejected  vicarious 
atonement  altogether. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        589 

by  himself  in  a  sort  of  confessional ;  he  instituted  a  "  minute 
inquisitorial  interference  with  the  lives  of  the  people."  Be- 
cause Castellio  questioned  the  inspiration  of  Solomon's 
Song,  Calvin  refused  him  the  ministry.  Worse  than  such 
impiety  was  it  to  criticize  adversely  Calvin  himself.  He 
forced  Ameaux  to  go  almost  naked  through  Geneva  and  beg 
pardon  of  God  for  saying  that  Calvin  was  a  bad  man.  He 
banished  Bolsec  because  Bolsec  said  Calvin's  theory  of  pre- 
destination was  nonsense,  and  (1553)  caused  Servetus  to 
be  burned  at  the  stake  because  of  disbelief  in  Calvin's  the- 
ology. Yet,  it  is  to  be  feared,  not  so  much  for  religion's 
sake  as  for  the  sake  of  his  own  authority.  As  one  of  his 
admirers  says:  Calvin  connived  with  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  to  slay  Servetus  not  so  much  because  of  heresy  as 
because  "  the  condemnation  of  Servetus  l  now  became  vital 
to  Calvin's  whole  Geneva  status." 

But  the  theocracy  established  by  Calvin  at  Geneva  was  a 
local  Protestant  autocracy,  which  his  own  neighbouring 
Protestant  states  detested,  as  they  ridiculed  him.  The 
Council  at  Bern  even  declared  Calvin  to  be  "  a  quarrelsome 
meddler  in  divine  counsels"  (1557),  and  said  that  they 
would  burn  his  Institutes  as  an  heretical  and  dangerous 
work.  Neither  Basel,  Zurich,  nor  Bern  upheld  Calvin 
against  Bolsec,  who  had  declared  that  predestination  was 
41  absurd."  It  is  urged  that  Calvin  showed  "  statesmanlike 
breadth  of  mind  "  and  that  he  helped  the  cause  of  civil  lib- 
erty. But  it  is  difficult  to  find  breadth  of  mind  in  any  of  his 
expressed  views,  while  his  actions  show  only  an  inordinate 

1  Servetus  was  "  a  man  of  genius  who  anticipated  much  not  only 
of  what  Socimamsm  afterwards  asserted,  but  some  Christological 
views  which  now  have  wide  currency"  (Walker,  John  Calvin  p 
326).  He  discovered  the  circulation  of  the  blood  three  quarters  of 
a  century  before  Harvey.  Calvin  showed  at  the  trial  that  Servetus 
had  said  that  Palestine  was  not  a  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey. 
Hence  (argued  Calvin)  Servetus  spoke  against  Moses;  therefore 
he  spoke  against  the  Holy  Spirit  who  inspired  Moses,  etc  In  his 
De  tnmtatis  erroribus  (1531),  Servetus  had  laid  the  foundation  of 
the  charges  against  him.  It  must  be  admitted  that  he  was  as  auda- 
cious and  impudent  as  he  was  clever. 


590  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

self-conceit.  His  practical  interpretation  of  civil  liberty  was 
that  the  Church  as  the  oracle  of  God  should  control  the  State 
and  that  John  Calvin  should  control  the  Church.  His  stren- 
uous morality  and  individualistic  conception  of  the  nature  of 
salvation  appealed  to  his  English  friends,  while  his  opposition 
to  the  papacy  released  the  English  world  from  one  Church 
without  binding  it  to  the  pope  of  Geneva.  Thus  only  can 
it  be  said  that  "  the  spiritual  indebtedness  of  Western  Eu- 
rope and  of  America  to  the  educating  influence  of  Calvin's 
theology  is  wellnigh  measureless"  (op.  cit.  p.  428).  In 
France,  two  years  before  his  death,  there  was  a  reaction 
which  weakened  the  Huguenots ;  but  this  was  largely  politi- 
cal. We  are  indebted  to  Calvin,  however,  if  not  for  his 
gloomy  theology,  for  his  severe  morality,  which  was  needed 
at  the  time.  His  intolerance  of  unethical  behaviour  put 
into  religion  a  force  it  had  almost  lost  and  its  severity  had  a 
tonic  effect  of  lasting  value. 

Augustine's  view  that  the  lost  who  are  not  given  the  grace 
of  perseverance  are  passed  by,  became  with  Calvin  the 
statement  that  men  are  damned  simply  to  please  God.  In 
opposition  to  the  Semi-Pelagianism  of  the  Church,  and  to 
the  Arminian  doctrine  of  inborn  evil  (not  guilt),  Calvin 
insisted  that  man  is  naturally  evil  and  guilty  and  redemption 
is  effected  through  God's  favouritism  (not  through  syn- 
ergism).  A  few  selected  (elect)  receive  the  undeserved 
grace  of  redemption.  Thus  absolute  predestination,  par- 
ticular redemption,  man's  total  depravity,  God's  irresistible 
grace,  and  the  perseverance  of  the  saints  are  the  five  theses 
urged  (at  Dort  in  1618-1619)  against  the  Arminians.  The 
glory  of  God,  not  the  blessedness  or  happiness  of  his  crea- 
ture, is  the  aim  of  God.  This  necessitates  predestination, 
which  again  is  proved  by  the  implication  of  provision  in 
prevision  on  the  part  of  every  intelligent  being.  The  Ar- 
minians, on  the  other  hand,  admit  fore-knowledge  but  gen- 
erally deny  fore-ordination. 

The  Geneva  consensus  on  predestination  occurred  in  1551. 
In  1551-1552  were  composed  in  England  the  original  Forty- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        59 1 

Two  Articles,  which,  when  revised,  became  the  Thirty-Nine 
Articles,  sanctioned  in  1571.  They  are  largely  Calvinistic. 
The  (Presbyterian)  Westminster  Conference  (1643-1648) 
embodied  the  Calvinistic  faith  for  those  politically  at  odds 
with  the  Crown.  But  the  English  Reformation  (1532- 
1536,  1547)  belongs  not  to  a  history  of  religion  but  to  a 
history  of  establishments.  It  introduced  no  new  ideas. 
Calvinism  mercifully  tempered  with  Arminianism  explains 
it,  except  on  its  political  side.  The  break  with  Rome  was 
due  to  desire  for  political,  not  religious,  freedom.  Mary 
(1553-1558)  established  Protestantism  firmly  by  her  intern^ 
perate  opposition  and  it  was  definitively  restored  by  Eliza- 
beth (1558),  though  soon  divided  by  the  re-reformers  called 
Puritans,  and  sub-divided  again  by  Separatists,  Quakers 
(George  Fox,  b.  1624,  was  a  pure  mystic),  etc.,  as  Luther- 
ism  was  divided  in  Germany  and  Calvinism  in  Poland. 

Two  of  these  reform  movements  deserve  special  notice, 
that  of  the  Pietists  in  Germany  and  that  of  the  Methodists 
in  England  and  America.  The  first  was  the  natural  anti- 
thetic result  of  Lutherism  and  Calvinism,  both  of  which  had 
done  what  they  could  to  stifle  emotional  religion.  Spener 
(b.  1635)  and  Francke  (b.  1663)  started  the  movement,  but 
their  "  piety "  at  first  outdid  Calvinism  in  some  regards. 
They  forbade  even  children  to  play  and  adults  were  taught 
to  scorn  all  occupation  except  that  of  occupying  their  souls 
with  religious  feeling;  even  religious  form,  such  as  church- 
going,  was  looked  upon  as  debasing.  Sentimental  piety  was 
true  religion.  The  Moravian  Zinzendorf  became  infected 
with  this  doctrine  and  established  in  1722  a  monastic  com- 
munity of  dispersed  Moravians  devoted  to  sensuous  mysti- 
cism, strict  discipline,  a  new  order  of  bishops,  and  an  elab- 
orate liturgy.  This  was,  of  course,  a  reversion  to  certain 
"  varieties  of  religious  experience  "  familiar  to  the  Church 
in  the  Middle  Ages.  Lutherans,  and  even  the  original  Pie- 
tists, were  revolted  by  the  indecency  inseparable  from  a  too 
sensuous  "  love  for  Jesus  "  and  Zinzendorf  was  banished. 
Later  conservatism  improved  this  body,  as  was  the  case  with 


592  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

the  Quakers,  who  also  began  as  mystics  and  at  first  offended 
decency,1  and  the  reformed  Pietists  adopted  the  Augsburg 
Confession  in  1749.  Apart  from  objectionable  features,  this 
Moravian  body,  active  in  America,  has  done  much  good  in 
Christianizing  savages  and  in  upholding  a  simple  Christian 
life. 

In  England,  a  High  Church  faction,  devoted  to  ritualism 
and  hence  called  Methodist  (1729),  became  the  sect  of  that 
name  through  the  influence  of  Wesley  and  Whitefield 
(1735).  It  fashioned  its  government  after  the  Established 
Church  (having  bishops),  but,  influenced  in  part  by  pietistic 
feeling,  it  reverted  to  an  apostolic  model  in  restoring  the 
Love-feast  and  especially  in  re-inventing  the  order  of  itin- 
erant evangelists,  who,  like  mediaeval  friars,  roamed  about, 
preaching  the  gospel  and  recalling  to  life  the  simple  spiritu- 
ality of  inner  religion.  Whitefield's  particular  followers  are 
Calvinistic,  otherwise  the  sect  is  Arminian ;  as  a  whole,  it 
insists  on  sanctification  and  the  witness  of  the  Spirit. 
Though  its  initial  success  was  due  chiefly  to  revivalist  meth- 
ods, it  has  held  its  own  through  its  ability  to  be  emotional 
without  being  sickly,  and  dramatic  without  being  insincere. 
It  is  significant  because  it  was  the  first  sect  both  to  minimize 
theology  as  compared  with  religion  and  to  see  religion 
broadly,  without  over-emphasis  on  non-essentials. 

In  England,  Legate  was  burned  at  the  stake  (for  holding 
the  Unitarian  heresy)  in  1611,  the  last  victim  of  that  form 
of  intolerance.  At  present,  after  three  hundred  years,  in- 
tolerance in  any  form  is  beginning  to  disappear.  In  the  late 
past  it  has  expressed  itself  rather  through  fission  than 
through  persecution.  In  America,  for  example,  the  orig- 
inal Calvinistic  Baptists  felt  unequal  to  the  strain  of  Chris- 
tian unity  and  a  sect  was  formed  of  Particular  Baptists, 
followed  by  other  sects  called  Free-will  Baptists,  Primitive 

1  The  charge  that  the  Puritans  fled  from  intolerance  only  to  be- 
come as  intolerant  themselves,  has  some  basis  of  truth:  but  they 
banished  the  Quakers  not  because  of  creed  but  because  of  their 
behaviour  (appearing  naked  in  church,  etc.). 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        593 

Baptists,  and  Seventh  Day  Baptists.  A  constant  reforming 
of  the  reformed  has  thus  led  to  new  parties  innumerable  ' 
but  not  to  new  ideas.  At  most,  one  religious  item  of  faith 
or  practice  has  been  heavily  stressed,  thus  producing  a  Bap- 
tist, a  Quaker,  a  Shaker,  a  Mormon  Prophet,  an  Endeav- 
ourer,  a  Christian  Scientist,  or  a  Salvationist,  of  whom  some 
are  sects  apart,  while  others  are  sectless,  drawn  from  any 
source,  but  now  devotees  of  one  idea.  Even  within  more 
conservative  ranks,  the  practical  effect  of  this  predilection 
for  dissension  has  resulted  in  the  anomaly  of  a  village 
scarcely  capable  of  supporting  one  "  meeting-house "  yet 
harbouring  three  or  four  sects,  whose  members  do  not  know 
why  they  differ  but  resolutely  remain  apart. 

That  they  do  not  know  why  they  differ  is,  however,  a 
distinct  advance.  Difference  or  dissent  is  only  their  reli- 
gious inheritance;  it  does  not  express  their  real  religious 
attitude,  which  has  passed  beyond  the  subtleties  of  creeds. 
It  is,  indeed,  sometimes  said  that  sects  are  a  good  thing; 
they  reflect  mental  activity;  they  keep  religion  alive.  Yet 
intellectual  vigour  expressed  by  quarrelling  about  minor 
matters  tends  to  keep  alive  not  religion  but  dogma.  Sects 
have  been  a  good  thing.  Each  has  preserved  something 
likely  to  be  lost,  independence,  ethics,  good  taste,  emotion, 
etc.  But  there  is  only  one  question  of  vital  importance  be- 
fore the  Church  today:  Is  Christianity  one  or  divided,  an 
ethical  system  or  a  mystical  belief,  or  both  ?  For  the  sects 
have  joined  hands  and  the  Church  long  ago  has  ceased  to 
excite  itself  over  the  problems  of  the  remoter  past.  It  is 
returning  to  that  simple  apostolic  state  of  mind  which  had 
nothing  to  say  of  predestination,  ignored  the  controversial 
possibilities  of  monophysitism,  and  did  not  even  define  the 
trinity,  but  taught  a  living  belief  in  the  brotherhood  of  man 
under  the  fatherhood  of  God. 

Yet,  even  that  age  had  this  same  vital  problem.     Is  Chris- 

1  In  Pennsylvania  alone  there  are  said  to  be  twenty-one  sects  and 
hfty-two  sub-divisions. 


594  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

tianity  the  teachings  of  Jesus  or  a  doctrine  about  Jesus?1 
If  the  former  be  called  the  religion  of  Jesus  and  the  latter, 
in  distinction  from  it,  be  called  Christianity,  that  is,  the  doc- 
trine about  Jesus  that  began  with  the  resurrection  and  in- 
terpreted him  mystically,  we  have  the  antithesis  presented 
by  the  "  liberal  Christianity  "  of  the  nineteenth  century  and 
the  monistic  mysticism  of  the  twentieth.  Both  have  an  his- 
torical foundation,  but  a  foundation  much  older  than  the 
Christian  era.  It  is  one  that  must  be  studied  in  the  light  of 
history. 

As  one  looks  back  over  the  long  extent  of  acrimonious 
debate,  passionate  judgments,  intolerance,  cruelty,  and  vice, 
which  mark  the  course  of  the  stream  of  Christianity,  one  is 
tempted  to  say  that  of  all  religions  this  is  the  most  inhumane, 
the  least  divine.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  when  one  sees  how 
often,  nay,  how  invariably,  this  turgid  stream,  full  of  abomi- 
nations made  by  man,  suddenly  clears  itself  and  becomes 
sweet  and  pure  again,  how,  through  choking  accumulations, 
rises  ever  anew  the  water  of  life,  fresh  from  its  fountain, 
one  is  led  to  ask  whether  any  other  religion  in  the  world 
has  this  faculty  of  renovating  itself,  and  from  what  source 
this  particular  religion  has  derived  its  marvellous  power. 

The  tongue  of  Faith  will  say  "  from  God,"  and  rest  there- 
with content.  But  the  historian  will  ask  by  what  means 
God  has  accomplished  this  result.  He  turns  to  the  records 
and  sees  that  all  religions  tend  to  express  the  peoples  who 
hold  them.  There  are  races  that  have  no  State-idea,  no 
State-ideal,  which  recognize  no  obligation  to  the  State,  which 
do  not  make  for  themselves  a  god  of  the  State,  but  rather 
bow  to  the  powers  of  nature  and  seek  to  understand  the  mys- 
tery of  nature.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  races  which 
ignore  nature  more  and  more  as  they  progress,  which  build 
up  a  State-ideal  and  make  for  themselves  a  State-god  as  head 
of  the  State,  whose  thought  is,  "  The  State  must  be  saved." 
In  such  races,  Roman,  Chinese,  obedience  to  the  State  and 
to  its  god  is  the  basis  of  the  higher  religion,  which  is  intelli- 

1  See  Bacon,  Christianity  Old  and  New,  New  Haven,  1914,  p.  117. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY        595 

gent,  ethical,  demanding  morality  as  the  foundation  of  the 
State,  as  the  first  law  of  its  god.  Such  was  above  all  the 
Hebrew  race ;  its  religion  was  a  race-religion ;  its  God  was 
a  deity  of  the  race  and  State ;  its  religion  was  ethical  rather 
than  mystical.  In  contrast  to  this,  the  religion  of  mysticism, 
which  prevailed  among  the  Mediterranean  races,  ignores  the 
State  in  favour  of  the  individual ;  it  says,  not  to  the  State  but 
to  the  man,  "  Thou  shalt  be  saved,  thou  shalt  live  again,  even 
as  nature  dies  and  lives  again." 

Now  these  two  religions,  the  social  and  the  personal,  each 
of  tremendous  power,  one  appealing  rather  to  the  intellect, 
the  other  to  the  feeling,  rarely  unite  as  equally  authoritative. 
Ethics,  morality,  is  rather  patched  upon  the  nature-religion 
of  mysticism  than  cognate  with  it.  It  is  not  first  connected 
with  the  god  integrally  and  then  assumed  as  a  divine  qual- 
ity, for  nature  is  not  moral.  Nor  is  mysticism  >  natural 
outgrowth  of  a  belief  in  a  transcendent  deity,  whose  law  is 
embodied  in  a  system  of  ethics.  So,  on  the  one  hand,  ethics 
is  an  unimportant  addition  to  the  mystical  Hindu  sects  and, 
on  the  other,  mysticism  is  an  unnatural  addition  to  the  reli- 
gion of  ancient  Rome.  But  Christianity  unites  these  as  au- 
thoritative, divinely  inspired,  elements.  They  are  not  for- 
mally associated ;  they  combine  from  the  resurrection.  God 
is  transcendent,  ethical,  as  he  is  immanent,  embracing  the 
world.  Man  must  be  moral,  yet  the  individual  soul  may  in 
mystic  vision  receive  the  Spirit.  God  is  the  head  of  the 
State;  yet  the  individual  shall  be  saved;  he  may  enjoy  rap- 
tures felt  only  by  the  mystic  and  merge  his  soul  in  the  larger 
life  in  which  the  mystic  seeks  his  God ;  yet  he  is  still  at  one 
with  his  sober  co-religionist,  who,  if  he  feel  no  such  rapture, 
yet  bows  to  the  same  God.  The  model  of  his  life,  moreover, 
is  given  not  in  abstractions  but  in  the  person  of  an  historical 
character,  who  *'  suffered  under  Pontius  Pilate." 

Hence  the  strength  of  Christianity.  In  it  divinity  blends 
with  humanity.  Moreover,  two  best  human  types,  the  moral 
and  the  spiritual,  not  artificially  joined  but  fundamentally 
blended,  two  ideals,  that  of  service  to  the  State,  that  of 


596  THE  HISTORY  OF  RELIGIONS 

fullest  expression  of  the  individual,  have  in  Christianity 
been  made  one.  To  divorce  this  union,  to  declare  that 
Christianity  must  be  a  system  of  ethics  alone  or  a  monistic 
mystery  alone,  is  to  disrupt  Christianity  itself. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 
F.  Legge,  Forerunners  and  Rivals  of  Christianity,  Cambridge, 


Carl     Clemen,     Primitive     Christianity    and    its    non-Jewish 

Sources,  Edinburgh,  1912. 
W.  Bousset,  Kyrios  Christ  os,  Gottingen,  1913. 

B.  W.  Bacon,  The  Making  of  the  New  Testament,  New  York, 

1912;  Christianity  Old  and  New,  New  Haven,  1914. 
J.  B.  Lightfoot,  The  Apostolic  Fathers,  London,  1891. 
Otto  Pfleiderer,  Early   Christian   Conceptions  of  Christ,  New 

York,  1905. 

C.  T.  Cruttwell,  A  Literary  History  of  Early  Christianity,  New 

York,  1893. 
Adolf    Harnack,    Lehrbuch    der    Dogmengeschichte,    2nd    ed. 

Freiburg,  1888-90;  What  is  Christianity,  New  York,  1904. 
K.  R.   Hagenbach,  A   Text-Book  of  the  History  of  Christian 

Doctrine,  translated  by  Henry  B.  Smith,  New  York,  1861. 
W.  G.  T.  Shedd,  A  History  of  Christian  Doctrine,  New  York, 

1863- 
George  Park  Fisher,  History  of  Christian  Doctrine,  New  York, 

1896. 

H.  O.  Taylor,  The  Medieval  Mind,  London,  1911. 
Williston  Walker,  John  Calvin,  New  York,  1906;  A  History  of 

the  Christian  Church,  New  York,  1918. 
H.  Boehmer,  Luther  in  the  Light  of  Recent  Research,  trans- 

lated by  C.  F.  Huth,  Jr.,  New  York,  1916. 
Josiah  Royce,  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  New  York,  1913. 
C.  M.  Cobern,  The  New  Archaeological  Discoveries  and  their 

Bearing  upon  the  New  Testament,  2nd  ed.,   New  York, 

1917. 


INDEX 


Aaron,  436,  462. 

Abbas,    Abbasides,    475;    Abbas 

Effendi,  482. 
Abelard,  575,  578. 
Abhidhamma,  197,  199. 
Abraham,      in      Babylon,      367; 

Patriarch,  418,  426,  581. 
Absolution,  569. 
Abstractions  as  spirits,  388,  487; 

non-Semitic,      441 ;       Roman, 

525. 

Abu  Bakr,  453  f.,  470,  473- 
Acceptilatio,  587. 
Achaean s,  483  f. 
Actaeon,  346. 
Adad,  Hadad,  346,  421 ;  Adados, 

421. 
Adam,    573;    Adam-Adapa,    352, 

419;  and  Iblis,  463. 
Adityas,  383. 
Adlivan,  77. 
Adonis,     Attis,     153,    326,    346; 

etymology  of,  364,  421,  557. 
Adultery,  562.     See  Cassia. 
Aeschylus,  503. 
Aesculapius,  Asklepios,  415,  504, 

537.  physician,  saviour,  559. 
Aether,  divinity,  541. 
African  gods,  24,  31;  in  Egypt 

(q.v.),  329- 
Agada,  447. 
Agape,  see  Love-feast. 
Ages,  myth  of,   American,   101 ; 

Avestan,  395 ;  Greek,  497. 
Agni,  Fire  as  god,  172. 
Agriculture,      26;      deities      of, 

American,    95,     109;     Roman, 

526.    See      Demeter,      Grain- 
gods. 


597 


Ahriman,     hostile     evil     spirit, 

379  f,  3?3,  403;  host  of,  387  f. 

See  Evil  One. 
Ahura,  see  Ormuzd. 
Ainus,  46  f.,  275,  282. 
Ajivikas,  181. 
Akbar,  475. 
Akkad,     Akkadians,     55,      344; 

theory,  15. 

Akmo  (Stone),  sky  as  god,  142. 
Albigenses,  Cathari,  Manichaean, 

57i. 

Aleuts,  22,  76. 
Alexander,    myth    of,    353,    376, 

462;  god,  509. 
Alexander  Severus,  549. 
Alexandria,  440,  557;  school  of, 

563,  567- 
Al-Ghazali,  479. 
Ali,  Aliites,  453  f.,  473  f.,  481. 
Allah,  452,  471.    See  Divinity. 
Allat,  365,  452. 

Allegorical  interpretation,  541. 
All-father,     158;     All-god,    208, 

211,   503;    All-soul,    178;    All- 
Souls  in  Japan,  278. 
Alogoi,  561. 

Amaterasu,  Omikami,  281. 
Ambactonos,  124. 
Ambrose,  St.,  543,  571,  574. 
American  religions,  75  f. 
Ames,  E.  S.,  41. 
Amesha   Spentas,   Amshaspands, 

37.6,  380  f .,  384  f . 
Amida,      Amitabha,      Amitayus, 

192,  198,  296  f. 

Ammonites,  Melek  of,  415,  425. 
Amon,    and    Aton    (q.v.),    314, 

320;  Amon-Re,  322. 


598 


INDEX 


Amoraim,  448. 

Amorites,  346,  349,  369. 

Amos,  425,  431  f.,  433. 

Amulets,  25,  77;  paper,  for  dead, 
105.  See  Charms,  Fetish. 

Amurru,  349. 

Anabaptists,  576,  584,  588. 

Anahita,  346,  386,  411. 

Anathemas,  67. 

Anaxagoras,  501,  504. 

Ancestors,  savage  cult  of,  28,  55, 
58,  65,  84;  female,  170;  in 
China,  228 f.;  in  Japan,  277; 
tablets  of,  247,  284 ;  m  Bab- 
ylon, 359,  365;  Arabic  clan-, 
365;  in  Greece,  483.  See 
Ghosts,  Shinto. 

Andaman  Islanders,  5. 

Andra,  Audra,  142,  172. 

Androgynous  gods,  92.  See  El, 
Shiva. 

Anesaki,  M.,  307. 

Angakok,  76. 

Angels,  385,  439;  lists  of,  405, 
439,  466,  472 ;  guardians  of  na- 
tions, 438;  of  heaven  and  hell, 
466!;  bear  God's  throne,  466; 
daughters  of  God,  454,  470; 
and  stars,  463,  508 ;  deified,  428 ; 
sexless,  472 ;  recording,  473 ; 
archangels,  383. 

Angus,  133. 

Animals,  as  ghosts  and  gods,  50, 
109;  calf-god,  316,  416;  sacred, 
78,  90;  Celtic,  125  f. ;  Indie, 
170,  175  f . ;  Chinese,  243,  246 ; 
Jain  and  Chinese  compassion 
for,  180,  269;  as  men,  284; 
-symbols,  422;  in  Egypt,  310, 
31 3  f.;  in  Greece,  486.  See 
Boar,  Bull,  Elephant,  Totem. 

Animism,  n,  19,  35,  48,  78,  228. 
See  Soul. 

Annunaki,  349. 

Anselm,  Bishop,  572,  575,  578, 
587. 

Anthesteria,  495. 

Antinomians,  308,  587. 

Antioch,  462 ;  school  of,  567. 

Antiochus  Epiphanes,  444. 


Anu  or  Danu,  Celtic  divinity, 
124;  Babylonian,  347  f.,  351  f. 

Anubis,  319. 

Aphrodite,  485,  510,  538. 

Apis,  Serapis,  316. 

Apollo,  105;  herd-god,  484!, 
487;  sun,  489;  oracle  of,  494, 
503;  in  Rome,  538. 

Apop,  315,  321. 

Apostle,  see  Mohammed ;  Apos- 
tles, 552  f . ;  creed  of,  560. 

Apotropaic  rites,  fire  and  shoot- 
ing, 108;  race,  112;  fire-rite, 
130,  152;  Indie,  175;  Chinese, 
244;  Greek,  493,  495.  See 
Lustration. 

Arabic  cult,  364,  452  f.;  culture, 

475- 

Aralu,  358. 
Aramaic     language,     440,     447; 

Aramaeans,  420. 
Araucanians,  108  f. 
Archaeology,  8. 
Arda  Viraf,  406. 
Ares,  485. 
Arhats       (Rakan,       Worthies), 

190  f. ;  in  Japan,  302. 
Aristotle,  505  f . ;  and  Moses,  449. 
Arius,  565  f. 

Ark,  356;  of  covenant,  417. 
Arniaiti,  384  f . 
Armenian  Church,  569. 
Arminians     (disciples    of    Her- 
mann), 574,  587,  590. 
Arnobius,  571,  581. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  6. 
Artemis,    Artio,    127,    346,    485, 

497,  526,  538,  557;  tauropolis, 

41 X. 

Arthur,  King,  127,  134  f. 
Articles,  Thirty-nine,  591. 
Aru  Islanders,  20,  44. 
Aruru,  352  f.,  365. 
Arvales,  Fratres,  519,  546. 
Aryan  religion,  16,  120,  171,  209, 

365. 

Asakawa,  K.,  302. 
Asceticism,    178,  479,   562.     See 

Fetish. 
Asanga,  200. 


INDEX 


599 


Asha,  arta,  rita,  Right  (Order), 

383,  3»5  f - 

Asharites   (Al-Ashari),  477. 

Asher,  tribe,  421 ;  asher^s,  366, 
421,  425.  See  Grove. 

Ashoka  (Asoka),  183. 

Ashur,  Assyrians,  345  f.,  349  f., 
ethics  of,  364;  influence  of, 
424,  432. 

Ashurbanipal,  347;  library  of, 
368  f. 

Ashvaghosha,  197,  200. 

Asmodeus,  387!,  405,  409,  439. 
See  Angels. 

Assassins,  religious  sect,  478, 
480. 

Astarte,  Astoreth,  421  f.,  423. 

Astrology,  Taoist,  270;  Babylon- 
ian, 360;  Greek,  508. 

Asura,  172,  372  f.    See  Ormuzd. 

Atargatis,  539. 

Athanasius,  566,  576. 

Atharva  Veda,  172! 

Athene,  485,  487. 

Athtar,  366. 

Atlas,  Bogota  form,  109. 

Atman,  breath,  soul,  188. 

Aton,  334  f . ;  Atum,  320 ;  Re-,  324. 

Atonement,  in  China,  242;  day 
of,  363,  437;  Jewish  concep- 
tion of,  450;  Christian,  559, 
575,  587.  See  Sacrifice,  Re- 
demption. 

Atrakhasis,  Xisuthros,  356. 

Attis,  539,  556.    See  Adonis. 

Atua,  60  f. 

Atys,  see  Attis. 

Augures,  530,  543;  augury  in 
China,  270.  See  Divination. 

Augustine,  St.,  I,  551  f.,  564; 
doctrine  of,  214,  567  f.,  570  f., 
573»  579  J  nuns  and  monks  of, 
572. 

Augustus,  Emperor,  546  f. 

Aureole  and  nimbus,  580. 

Australian  religion,  17,  20. 

Avaiki,  62. 

Avallon,  131. 

Avalokiteshvara,  198,  201,  298; 
as  Kuannon,  Kuanyin,  270. 


Avatars,  209  f. 

Avesta,  373  f . 

Axe,  symbol,  130. 

Ayesha,  470. 

Azhi  Dahaka,  see  Dragon. 

Aztecs,  90,  94  f .,  102  f . 

Baal,  see  Bel. 

Babis,  479,  482. 

Babylon,   175,  226,  272;   religion 

of,  344  f. ;  influence,  346,  438; 

festivals,     353;     Bapel,     388; 

tower  of,  419,  428. 
Backbone,  as  serpent,  51,  494. 
Bacon,  B.  W.,  594. 
Bahis,  479,  482. 
Balder,  151,  154,  161. 
Bantu s,  25. 
Baptism,  33,  65,  86,  118,  558,  560, 

569,    574,    58i;    Baptist    sects, 

592. 

Bar  Cocheba,  441,  449. 
Bardesanes,  272,  568. 
Barnabas,  575. 
Barton,  G.  A.,  415,  419,  441. 
Baruti,  Barim,  361,  424. 
Barzdukai,  143. 
Basil,  the  Great,  576. 
Basilides,  563,  575. 
Bast,  317,  321. 
Batchelor,  John,  47  f. 
Bath,  purgation,  85;  sweat-bath, 

86,91. 

Beans,  food  for  ghosts,  504,  524. 

Bear-cult,  50  f. 

Bedouins,  455,  466. 

Beelzebub,  416. 

Beer-ritual,  172.  See  Intoxi- 
cants, Soma. 

Bees,  god  of,  97;  Slavic,  142. 

Bel,  Baal,  Belit,  348,  365,  421; 
Bel-Marduk,  349,  351;  Baal- 
Berith,  423. 

Belenos,  123. 

Belgians,  124. 

Bendis,  Moon,  509. 

Benedict,  order  of,  576,  583. 

Ben  Sira,  443,  449,  558. 

Beowulf,  164. 

Bernhard,  577! 


6oo 


INDEX 


Berosus,  356. 

Berserkers,  165. 

Bhagavad-Gita,  211  f.,  216. 

Bhakti,  197,  211  f.,  213  f. 

Bhandarkar,  Sir  R.,  212. 

Bible,  578,  584. 

Bida,  Usage,  as  religious  prin- 
ciple, 481. 

Bile,  132. 

Bird,  Isabella,  47  f. 

Birds,  American  belief,  78; 
make  wind,  82;  bird-man,  93; 
of  hell,  messengers,  97;  hum- 
ing-bird  god,  103;  in  divina- 
tion, 115,  153;  praise  God, 
461  f.;  raven,  78;  goose,  126; 
hawk,  121,  133;  owl,  142.  See 
Augury,  Horus,  Kirke,  Soul. 

Birth,  mysterious,  135;  miracu- 
lous, of  Confucius,  Zoroaster, 
Mohammed,  etc.,  see  under 
each;  divinity  of,  538.  See 
Regeneration,  Taboo,  Virgin- 
birth. 

Bishops,  559,  562,  570  f.,  586. 

Blood,  70,  74 ;  spilling  of,  97 ;  for 
vegetation  99,  170;  reveals 
murderer,  152;  offering  to 
ghosts  and  demons,  175 ;  -soul, 
245;  gods  born  of,  280;  -broth- 
erhood, 365  ;  -offering,  421 ;  in 
Roman  cult,  528;  of  martyrs, 
565.  See  Atonement. 

Boadicea,      Boudicca,      goddess, 

Boar,  in  Adonis-myth,  422.  See 
Stiovitaurilia. 

Boccaccio,  577. 

Bodhidharma,  in  China,  271,  295. 

Bodhisat,  191  f. 

Boehme,  579. 

Bogu,   Bagaios,   144. 

Bolsec,  589. 

Bona  Dea,  529,  537. 

Book  of  the  Dead,  311 ;  of  the 
Gates  and  of  the  Other 
World,  329  f  ;  of  Rewards,  etc., 
268;  of  Secret  Blessings,  268. 
See  Bible.  • 

Borneo,  20,  100,  141. 


Borvo,  Bourbon  deity,  126. 

Brahma,  as  power,  67;  world- 
power,  174,  178,  185,  205. 

Brahman,  Creator,  173,  178, 
205  f.,  501. 

Brahman s,  Brahmanic  gods  in 
Japan,  301  f . ;  Celtic  parallel 
to  Brahmans,  128;  Brahmans 
in  Buddhism,  186. 

Bran,  Celtic,  133. 

Bread  and  Tea  sect,  272. 

Breasted,  J.  H.,  327,  337. 

Breath,  as  soul,  88.  See  Atman, 
Spirit. 

Bridge  of  souls,  88  f . ;  of  hair, 
115;  of  separation  and  judg- 
ment, 382  f .,  393  f. ;  El  Aaraf , 
467.  See  Rainbow,  Soul. 

Brigit,  St.,  131. 

Brihaspati,  131. 

Britain,  Prydain,  134. 

Britomartis,  485. 

Brotherhood  of  man,  207,  506, 
513,  545- 

Bruno,  579. 

Buddha,  178,  183  f.;  216;  as 
mother,  270;  birthday  (April 
8),  293;  and  Heraclitus,  500; 
as  Christian  saint,  580. 

Buddhism,  2,  53,  57,  183  f. ;  and 
Upanishads,  178;  four  truths 
of,  184 ;  eight  precepts  of,  187 ; 
Hina  and  Mahayana,  190,  192, 
194,  200;  Tantra  and  Mantra- 
yana,  204  f.;  and  Gospels,  195, 
552;  church  and  ethics  of,  196; 
in  China,  etc.,  197;  sects,  203; 
literature  of,  197,  294;  esoteric, 
201 ;  in  Tibet,  203 ;  in  China, 
244,  263  f .,  266,  272 ;  in  Japan, 
287  f.,  306;  Japanese  sects, 
292  f . ;  traits  of,  in  Chinese  re- 
ligion, 227,  252  f.,  265;  in 
Japan,  281  f.,  284;  militant 
monks  of,  291  f. 

Buddhaghosha,  197. 

Budge,  E.  A.  W.,  315. 

Bulgarians,  138. 

Bull,  as  god,  176,  316;  -feast, 
126;  of  Shiva,  207;  -sacrifice, 


INDEX 


601 


208;  Chinese,  241;  bull-slay- 
ing, tauroktonos,  411.  See 
Apis,  Dionysos. 

Bulla,  as  fetish,  42. 

Burial,  8,  33,  63,  77;  third  day 
after  death,  72;  articles 
broken  at,  88;  Celtic,  132; 
Slavic,  145 ;  Scandinavian, 
150;  of  the  living,  239,  278; 
Zoroastrian,  389,  402;  Greek, 
496;  Roman,  524  f.  See  Sut- 
tee, Taboo. 

Bushido,  285. 

Bushmen,  24  f. 

Butler,  Bishop,  4;  Chinese  par- 
allel, 259. 

Caesar,  Julius,  account  of  Bri- 
tain, 122  f. ;  of  Germany,  151 
f. ;  and  priestly  college,  530; 
and  cult  of  Bacchus,  547. 

Cain,  as  Kenite,  418. 

Caitanya,  210,  215. 

Caird,  Edward,  5. 

Calendar,  Aztec,  106;  Chinese, 
226;  Roman,  526;  nefas  or 
taboo  (knot)  days,  362. 

Calf,  Golden,  see  Animals. 

Caliph,  Caliphates,  473. 

Callaway,  Bishop,  27. 

Camulus  and  Himmel,  123. 

Calvin,  John,  572,  574,  581  f., 
587  f. 

Canaan,  366,  420  f. 

Candles,  for  corpse,  see  Fire. 

Cannibalism,  27,  33,  64,  80. 

Carib,  as  cannibal,  80. 

Carnoy,  A.  J.,  406. 

Caro,  Joseph,  448. 

Carthage,  539. 

Carvaka,  264. 

Casmenta  (carmen),  528. 

Cassia,  ordeal,  39. 

Castes,  South  American,  107; 
Indie,  174;  in  Buddhism,  186; 
Shivaite  disregard  of,  207. 

Castor,  526,  529. 

Cato,  541. 

Caves  as  graves,  115;  pictures 
of,  8,  42,  121 ;  as  temples,  112. 


Celibacy,  479.    See  Monasteries. 

Celtic  religion,  61,  96,  120  f. 

Ceres,  36,  545. 

Chac,  gods,  95. 

Chalcedon,  Council  of,  567,  572; 
Chalcedonian  Christology,  571. 

Chaldneans,  360,  508,  547. 

Chamberlain,  B.  H.,  48. 

Chanuka,  feast  of  lights,  450. 

Charila,  American  parallel  of, 
101. 

Charms,  62,  548;  Egyptian, 
329.  See  Amulets,  Fetish, 
Karakia. 

Chassidists,  449. 

Chemi,  40. 

Chemosh,  423. 

Cheops,  313. 

Cherubim,  439. 

Chiliasm,  576. 

China,  Chinese,  tablets,  80;  re- 
ligion, 224  f . ;  contact  with  the 
West,  273;  with  Japan,  275, 
285  f.  See  Babylon,  Buddhism. 

Chou-Tuni,  264. 

Christ,  Christian  religion,  552  f.; 
influence  on  Slavs*  Hindus, 
etc.,  145,  213  f .,  216  f . ;  m 
Japan,  303  f. ;  parallels,  383, 
396  f . ;  in  China,  267 ;  and 
Jews,  441,  451 ;  and  Moham- 
med, 458;  borrowed  from 
Rome,  545;  aided  by  Pax  Ro- 
mana,  546;  definition  of  Chris- 
tianity, 593  f . ;  Christmas,  546, 
548,  553- 

Chrysippus,  506,  508,  541. 

Chrysostom,  572. 

Chthonic  divinities,  493 ;  at 
Rome,  540.  See  Earth. 

Chuang-tse,  252,  255  f .,  260. 

Chu-Hi,  264,  285,  300. 

Cicero,  3,  543. 

Circumcision  34,  60,  417,  438. 

Cistercians,  577. 

Clan -gods,  416. 

Classification  of  religions,  lof. 

Gay,  A.  T.,  367. 

Clement,  of  Alexandria,  557,  564, 
566,  572;  of  Rome,  559. 


602 


INDEX 


Cluny,  monastery,  reforms  insti- 
tuted by,  577. 

Cocoa,  worship  of,  112. 

Cocks,  oppose  evil  spirits,  in 
China,  243 ;  in  Avesta,  400. 

Colours,  34,  60,  67,  102;  of  di- 
rection-gods, 92,  107;  of  sun- 
god,  black  and  red,  104;  of 
rivers  of  hell,  105 ;  of  Amesha 
Spentas,  384 ;  Mohammedan, 
green,  465. 

Communion  with  gods,  163; 
through  eating,  49,  58,  100,  118; 
prayer,  87 ;  intoxication,  100 ; 
in  India,  173  f. ;  in  Babylon, 
349,  365;  Hebraic,  415; 
Greek,  499;  Roman,  534,  540; 
Christian,  558,  569.  See  Eu- 
charist. 

Conchobar,  Cooley,  god  or  hero, 

135. 

Confession,  99;  in  Peru,  118; 
Buddhistic,  197 ;  Zoroastrian, 
391 ;  Christian,  560 ;  Calvin's, 
589.  See  Fravashi. 

Confucius,  224  f.,  243,  249  f., 
251  f .,  255 ;  and  Mencius,  258 ; 
deified,  256,  271;  and  Moh, 
260. 

Conopas,  112. 

Constantine,  550,  566. 

Consubstantiation,    582. 

Cook,  A.  B.,  485. 

Coptic  United  Church,  569. 

Corn-genius,  see  Grain. 

Councils  of  Aries,  Chalcedon, 
Trent,  574,  576. 

Couvade,  49. 

Covenant,  Book  of  the,  425,  433 ; 
code  ratified  by,  435. 

Creation,  myth  of,  84,  97;  from 
nothing,  398 ;  creator-gods, 
105,  109,  113,  117,  173;  in  Bud- 
dhism, 184,  198 ;  in  China,  245 ; 
in  Japan,  282 ;  in  Babylon,  350, 
353,  369;  creationism,  573.  See 
Ancestors,  Evolution. 

Creeds,  of  third  century,  565; 
Apostles',  560;  Nicene,  566. 

Cremation,    33;    American,    88; 


Slavic,     145;     German,     150; 

Achaean,  496. 
Crete,  332,  483  *•>  502,  513. 
Cromlech,  121. 
Cross,    Aztec    as    tree    of    life, 

io6f. ;  cross  and  crucifix,  569; 

cross-road  spirits,  129. 
Crusades,  583  f. 
Culture-heroes,     myth     of,     7°> 

83  f. ;  Peruvian,  113 ;  Tohil,  95  ; 

Chibcha,    109;     -goddess,    96; 

heroine,  no;  German,  164. 
Cumont,  F.,  412  f. 
Curse,  491. 
Cuthah,  358. 
Cybele,  502,  509  f.,  529,  556.    See 

Attis,  Magna  Mater. 
Cyprian,  572,  574. 
Cyrus,    373,    434;    as    Messiah, 

441. 

Daevas,  380!,  388,  404 

Dagda  (Daksha),  131,  133. 

Dagon,  424. 

Daimios,  286. 

Dakhmas,  389,  402. 

Damnation,  581,  590. 

Dance,  19  f.,  22,  25  f.,  30,  34,  82; 
fertility-,  97,  100,  112,  153; 
death-,  64,  240;  of  dead,  78; 
American,  85,  87,  91 ;  wiclder- 
shins,  92 ;  deasil,  129 ;  on  stilts, 
97 ;  religion  of,  109 ;  initiation-, 
196;  Indie,  170;  Kogura,  281; 
ritual,  284;  Hebraic,  425, 
433  f . ;  Roman,  530 ;  Christian, 
19.  See  Sun. 

Danhu,  Dasyu,  see  Demon  na- 
tion. 

Daniel,  405,  409,  433  f.,  443. 

Dante,  406,  577. 

Danu,  124,  133. 

Darius,  373. 

Darmesteter,  J.,  16,  376,  385,  408. 

David,  418,  424. 

Dawn,  African  divinity,  26; 
American,  90 ;  Slavic,  139,  142 ; 
Indie,  172,  176. 

Days,  and  planets,  508;  Friday, 
4555  Judgment  Day,  454,  457, 


INDEX 


6o3 


468,  471;  day  of  rest,  464; 
Roman,  536.  See  Calendar, 
Sabbath,  Taboo. 

Dayananda,  219  £.,  222. 

Deasil,  see  Dance,  Sun. 

De  Civitate  Dei,  572. 

Dead,  disposal  of,  88,  389,  524; 
offerings  to,  131,  241 ;  feast  of, 
152;  god  of,  Woden,  159;  Anu- 
bis,  319,  330;  Greek  and 
Roman  treatment  of,  493,  524, 
545.  See  Burial,  Cremation, 
Dog,  Embalming. 

Death,  as  illness  and  sleep,  66; 
as  spirit,  77,  96,  105 ;  Mara,  as 
the  Evil  One,  195;  servant  of 
Evil  One,  398. 

Deborah,  song  of,  419. 

Decalogue,  429  f. 

Decemviri,  530,  540. 

Decius,  565. 

Definitions  of  religion,  I  f. 

De  Groot,  J.  J.  M.,  229. 

Deification,  of  men,  33,  60;  of 
kings,  365. 

Deives  and  daevas,  143  f. 

De  la  Grasserie,  10. 

Delphi,  489. 

Deluge,  common  belief  in,  62,  84, 
97,  101,  109;  Indie,  174; 
Babylonian,  350,  355;  Hebrew, 
367,  369,  419,  427. 

Demeter,  485  f.,  487  f-,  494  i-, 
497  f.;  as  Christian  saint,  510; 
in  Rome,  538.  See  Grain- 
spirit. 

Democritus,  500. 

Demon  nations,  Chinese,  Aves- 
tan,  238,  372. 

Demonology,  172,  243;  Chinese, 
270;  Japanese,  301 ;  Greek,  501. 
See  Animals,  Ghosts,  Spirits. 

Dependence  on  gods,  422. 

Depravity,  total,  of  Calvin,  590. 

Derketo,  422,  424. 

Dervishes,  433,  479- 

Descartes,  579. 

Desire,  189.     See  Love,  Thirst. 
Determinism,  443/574. 
Deus,  7. 


Deuteronomy,  433. 

Devil,  see  Satan. 

Devouress  of  hell,  340  f. 

Dharma,  law  and  God,  dhar- 
makaya,  191  f. ;  Japanese  form, 
301. 

Dharmaraksha,  in  China,  271. 

Diana  of  Aricia,  525. 

Diasia,  495. 

Diatessaron,  564. 

Didache,  Teaching  of  the  Apos- 
tles, 560. 

Digambara  (Sky-garment),  sect 
of  Jains,  181. 

Diocletian,  Emperor,  549,  566. 

Dione,  487  f .,  522. 

Dionysos,  484  f .,  494  f .,  498,  502 ; 
Indie  form,  206;  Bacchus  in 
Rome,  538,  547;  Epiphany  and 
miracle  of,  553,  556. 

Direction-gods,  see  Quarters, 
Winds. 

Disease-demons,  32,  59  f.,  96, 
538;  as  Mothers,  105;  plague 
as  goddess,  143. 

Dis  Pater,  Celtic  form,  122,  130, 
132. 

Divination,  110,  115;  Celtic, 
126  f . ;  Slavic,  144 ;  German, 
153;  Chinese,  237,  245,  270; 
Japanese,  284;  Babylonian, 
361,  366;  Greek,  491,  494;  ar- 
row-, 361,  467;  liver-,  361 ;  tor- 
toise-, 245.  See  Augury, 
Birds,  Horse. 

Divinity,  concept  of,  as  power, 
61 ;  god  as  invoked,  164;  sav- 
age idea  of,  34,  83,  90;  Na- 
huan,  106;  Peruvian,  113;  de- 
fined by  negation,  178;  in  Bud- 
dhism, 193;  of  Ramanuja,  213; 
Chinese,  231  f.,  261 ;  Japanese, 
307;  Egyptian,  334.  Hebrew, 
451 ;  Mohammedan,  460,  463. 

Docetism,  Buddhistic,  303 ; 
Greek,  Manichaean,  Gnostic, 

559- 

Dodona,  Celtic,  127. 
Dog,  and  the  dead,  89;   escorts 

soul,    105,    115;    catches    soul, 


604 


INDEX 


145;  averts  devils,  404;  sacri- 
fice of,  82,  90,  96  f. ;  as  ances- 
tor, 84;  Kerberos  and  Celtic 
dog  of  dead,  132 ;  dog  and  fer- 
tility, 151,  163;  man  as  dog 
or  slave,  of  god,  422. 

Dominicans,  577. 

Domitian,  Emperor,  548,  565. 

Donatus,  views  of,  571. 

Door,  avoidance  of,  472;  -spirit, 
518.  See  Janus. 

Dorsitheans,  446. 

Doshisha,  school,  307. 

Douglas,  R.  K.,  271. 

Doukhabors,  569. 

Dragon,  Chinese,  246,  269; 
Egyptian,  315;  Dragon-slayer, 
377;  Azhi-Dahaka,  388,  405, 
407;  Hebraic,  439.  See  Ser- 
pent. 

Drama,  religious,  19,  25,  77,  87, 
91 ;  vegetation-,  99 ;  in  Peru, 
116  f. ;  Indie,  178,  196,  207,  211 ; 
Egyptian,  340 ;  Greek,  498,  502  ; 
Purim,  450 ;  Roman,  529,  536. 

Dravidians,  55,  170  f.,  175,  208. 

Dreams,  no,  126,  153,  361. 

Drought,  as  demon,  243. 

Druids,  127  f .,  494,  547. 

Druj,  Lie  as  demon,  388. 

Dryads,  486. 

Dualism,  83;  Sankhya,  207; 
Slavic,  148;  Teutonic,  167; 
Yoga,  178;  Semitic,  366;  Zoro- 
astrian,  379;  Greek,  511 

Dumuzi,  see  Tammuz. 

Duns  Scotus,  578,  587. 

Durga,  207. 

Durkheim,  E.,  6,  12. 

Dyaus,  172. 


Ea,  347  *  •,  and  Adapa,  352,  355. 

Earth-spirit,  34,  92;  Celtic,  130; 
Indie,  172;  in  Peru,  112; 
Slavic,  141 ;  in  China,  228 ;  in 
Japan,  279;  in  Rome,  526.  See 
Demeter,  Grain-spirit,  Mother. 

Easter,  570. 

Ebionites,  561. 


Echo,  spirit,  62. 

Eckhardt,  578. 

Eclipse,  49,  108,  156. 

Ecstasy,  57,  112,  433.  See 
Shamanism. 

Eden,  468.     See  Paradise. 

Edwards,  J.,  574. 

Egg,  cosmic,  112,  398,  504. 

Egypt,  religion  of,  309  f . ;  de- 
rivation of  name,  310;  history, 
312;  and  Palestine,  420;  and 
Greece,  502. 

Eisai,  295. 

El,  Lord,  365 ;  of  Babylon,  423. 

El  Aaraf,  see  Bridge. 

Elagabalus,  549. 

Elect,  election,  574,  590. 

Elements,  five  Chinese,  244,  264; 
and  planets,  269;  four  Greek, 
500;  Stoic,  506;  stoicheia,  508. 

Elephant-god,  207. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  580,  591. 

Eleusis,  494  f.,  498.  See  Myste- 
ries. 

El  'Hidhr,  462. 

Elijah,  Elisha,  359,  424,  430,  442. 

Ellis,  Col.,  29  f .,  38. 

Elves,  149,  i66f. 

Elysium,  348,  330,  332,  502. 

Embalming,  115,  340.  See  Bu- 
rial, Dead. 

Empedocles,  500,  503. 

Emperor,  of  China,  deified,  230  f . 
See  Augustus. 

England  as  Engel-land,  164. 

Enkidu,  353  f .,  360. 

Enlil,  347,  356. 

Ennead,  see  Triad. 

Ennius,  541. 

Enoch,  359,  442. 

Epictetus,  548,  552. 

Epicurus,  508,  540;  Chinese  Epi- 
cureanism, 263. 

Epiphanius,  568. 

Epiphany,  553.     See  Dionysos. 

Epona,  horse-goddess,  125  f. 

Ereshkigal,  348,  357  f-,  3^5- 

Erinyes,  496. 

Eroticism,  see  Mysticism. 

Eschatology,    savage    belief,    20, 


INDEX 


605 


27,  33,  5?,  62  f .,  77,  87  f .,  105, 
115;  Celtic,  131  f.;  Slavic,  145; 
Indie,  175,  1/8;  Chinese, 
229  f . ;  Japanese,  277  f . ;  Egyp- 
tian, 311,  328  f. ;  Babylonian, 
364  f.,  357 ;  Zoroastrian,  392  f., 
396  f.;  Hebraic,  442;  Moham- 
medan, 465  f . ;  Greek,  497 ; 
Roman,  524;  Christian,  558. 
See  Sheol,  Walhalla. 

Eskimos,  37,  42,  71,  75  f. 

Essenes,  72,  446,  534,  573. 

Esther,  362,  450. 

Esus,  Aes,  125,  132. 

Etana,  Ethan,  357,  360. 

Ethics,  savage,  22,  39,  41,  73,  75, 
90,  118;  and  religion,  595;  in 
Slavic  religion,  147;  Teutonic, 
167;  Vedic,  178:  Buddhistic, 
185,  196;  relation  between 
ethics  and  religion  in  China, 
238,  256,  268;  good  for  evil, 
251;  Japanese,  285,  288;  Egyp- 
tian, 311,  340;  Babylonian,  359, 
363,  368 ;  Zoroastrian,  389  f ., 
392;  Hebraic,  415,  425,  431, 
450;  Mohammedan,  456,  469; 
Greek,  485,  491,  501,  513; 
Roman,  531,  549;  Christian, 
526,  529. 

Ethnography,  9. 

Etruria,  Etruscan  culture,  517  f., 
526,  539- 

Eubuleus,  495. 

Eucharist,  559,  576,  582,  585.  See 
Communion. 

Etihemerus,  541 ;  euhemerized 
gods,  123  f .,  497 ;  in  China,  244, 
269;  Mohammed's  family  as 
nature-gods,  478;  Roman, 
546  f . 

Eumenides,  497.     See  Manes. 

Euripides,  501  f.,  503. 

Eusebius,  566,  576. 

Eutyches,  567. 

Eve,  360. 

Evil,  origin  of,  502,  563;  evil 
eye,  240;  Agashi,  388,  404; 
Evil  One  as  death,  195;  Ahri- 
man,  374,  378  f.,  404  f . ;  created 


by  Zeus,  502 ;  by  God,  439,  464 ; 

See  Satan,  Sin. 

Evolution,  66;   Zoroastrian,  398. 
Exile,  Jewish,  424,  434. 
Ezekiel,  433  f .,  435,  438  f.,  441  f. 
Ezra,  435,  443;  son  of  God,  454. 

Fahien,  198,  266. 

Fairies,  124;  king  of,  123,  131; 
Welsh,  134;  Slavic,  143. 

Faith,  in  Buddhism,  184,  187; 
Sraosha,  384  f . ;  faith-sects, 
211 ;  in  Japan,  296  f. ;  Christian 
doctrine  of,  574,  586  f . ;  con- 
fession of,  191. 

Falashas,  446. 

Fanatici,  539. 

Farnell,  L.  R.,  346,  484  f. 

Fasts,  fasting,  40,  85,  91,  97, 
no,  118,  417,  Ramadhan,  468; 
Christian,  586. 

Fate,  in  China,  263,  264;  Semitic 
belief,  363 ;  Mohammedan, 
458,  465,  476 ;  three  Fates,  486, 
490;  wyrd,  1 66. 

Father-god,  173,  207,  451,  460. 

Fatima,  Fatimites,  474,  480. 

Fauna,  Faunus,  537,  538. 

Fear,  as  god,  208.     See  Sebas. 

Female  element,  61 ;  Lettic,  140; 
Hindu,  208;  Chinese,  248; 
Japanese,  301 ;  Allat,  365. 

Feng  Shui,  270. 

Fenrir,  156. 

Feralia,  495,  524,  528. 

Fertility-spirit,  34;  thunder  as, 
95;  -rite,  91  f.,  97,  99,  170; 
goddess  with  many  breasts, 
100;  charms,  104,  112;  sym- 
bols, Celtic,  130,  133;  German, 
151,  154,  158,  160,  162 f.;  Japa- 
nese harvest-god,  283;  Bab- 
ylonian, 348;  Canaanite,  366, 
422 ;  Greek,  495 ;  Roman,  536  f ., 
531.  See  Grain-spirit. 

Festivals,  Yam,  24;  taboo  at,  70; 
as  sacrifice,  97;  American,  90, 
97;  Celtic,  129 f.;  Slavic,  144; 
German,  152;  Puranic,  218; 
Chinese,  242;  Egyptian,  331!; 


6o6 


INDEX 


Babylonian,  348,  362  f .,  366 ; 
Hebraic,  425,  438 ;  Roman,  535. 
See  Christmas,  Grain-spirit, 
Saturnalia. 

Fetish,  8,  19  f .,  26,  29  f .,  35  f.,  41 ; 
South  American,  no,  112,  115; 
Indie,  218;  -stone,  456. 

Fiji,  22,  60,  63,  66. 

Fikh,  476. 

Filioque,  568  f. 

Finn,  Celtic,  123;  Finns,  18,  60, 
149. 

Firdaus,  466.     See  Paradise. 

Fire,  worship  of,  32,  49,  79; 
-dragon,  90;  renewal  of,  96, 
112,  114;  Aztec,  old  god,  102; 
Peruvian,  1 14 ;  Celtic,  129  f . ; 
Slavic,  140,  142 ;  German,  need- 
fire,  151  f.,  153;  Indie,  172, 
175 ;  Chinese  corpse-candles, 
241 ;  -walking,  246 ;  Japanese 
cult,  279;  Zoroastrian,  383  f., 
385 ;  -altars,  386,  404;  taboo  of, 
362 ;  Roman,  against  spirits, 
526;  Vestal,  531;  Volcanus, 
538.  See  Virgin. 

Fish,  god,  24,  61,  112,  175,  209, 
422;  -taboo,  71. 

Flaying,  in  sacrifice,  98  f.,  no. 

Flora,  536. 

Flowers,  offerings  of,  in  Peru, 
106;  in  India,  170:  in  Japan, 
289. 

Fomorach,  133. 

Food,  divinities  of,  112;  -sacri- 
fice, 242;  -goddess,  282  f. 

Footsteps  of  gods,  117. 

Forke,  A.,  245,  264. 

Fortuna,  525;  Fortune,  goddess, 
139,  144,  5o8  f.,  538.  See  Gad, 
Tyche. 

Fountain-gods,  142 ;  Fountain 
of  Youth,  86,  462;  Fontinalia, 

Fox,  George,  591. 

Foxes,    Chinese,   243;    Japanese, 

283. 
Francis,     St.,    Franciscans,    577. 

583. 
Francke,  A.  H.,  591. 


Fravashi,  376,  392  f. 

Frazer,  Sir  J.,  3,  12,  71,  325,  342. 

Free-will,  394,  443,  476,  564. 

Freyja,  Frigg,  Freyr,  151,  156, 
162  f . 

Friars,  577,  584. 

Frogs,  in  fertility-rite,  92. 

Functional  gods,  60,  96;  of  mer- 
chants, 194;  Slavic,  139  f.,  143; 
Greek  and  Roman,  487,  524. 
See  Nnmina. 

Future  life,  see  Eschatology. 

Gabirol,  449. 

Gad,  Fortune  as  deity,  421. 

Gamaliel,  447,  558. 

Games,  in  honour  of  gods, 
Aztec,  104;  Peruvian,  117;  ludi 
Romani,  etc.,  529,  540. 

Gandharva,  Ganderewa,  389. 

Ganesha,  Elephant-god,  207. 

Garbe,  R.,  196,  217. 

Garden-god,  142. 

Gathas,  hymns,  Zoroastrian,  171, 
376 ;  Buddhistic,  197. 

Geb,  320,  327. 

Gehenna,  Ge  Hinnom,  426,  468; 
Jehennum,  472. 

Geku,  282. 

Gellius,  533. 

Gemara,  447. 

Genesis,  351. 

Genius,  spirit,  523  f.;  of  Augus- 
tus, etc.,  546  f. 

Genku,  Honen,  297. 

Genshin,  292. 

Geonim,  448. 

Germans,  8  f . ;  and  Celts,  124  f . ; 
characteristics  of,  150  f.  See 
Kultur. 

Ghebers,  Guebers,  410. 

Ghosts,  22,  25,  27,  29,  34,  47  f., 
59  f.,  62,  65  f .,  76,  79,  146 ;  Ger- 
man, as  churchyard  flames, 
152,  164;  Chinese,  228,  2441.; 
as  hot  air,  264;  Hebrew  417; 
Greek,  495,  502;  Roman,  52.]. 
See  Ancestors,  Dead,  Spirits. 

Giants,  62;  of  stone,  82,  101  ;  K  i- 
gota,  as  Atlas,  109;  Celtic,  evil, 


INDEX 


607 


133;     Teutonic,     stupid,     152, 
161  f.,  166. 

Giles,  H.  A.,  229;  Lionel,  262. 

Gilgamesh,  353,  359;  deified 
king,  365. 

Gnomes,  143. 

Gnosticism,  478,  459  f.,  563  f.,  572. 

Goblins,  279. 

Gods,  paired,  92;  return  of,  105, 
283;  men  as,  117;  groups  of, 
159;  transparent,  172;  nominal 
gods,  280 ;  names  of  Arab  gods, 
462;  of  God,  402,  463,  472. 

Gog  and  Magog,  462. 

Gohei,  282. 

Golden  Age,  Chinese,  251.  See 
Yima. 

Goldziher,  I.,  481. 

Gosala,  181. 

Gospels,  see  Synoptic  Gospels. 

Goths,  572. 

Grace,  497,  511,  S7if«;  irresist- 
ible, 590. 

Graebner,  F.,  16. 

Graecus  ritus,  in  Rome,  540. 

Grail,  origin  of,  132  f. 

Grain-spirit,  98,  112,  130,  142, 
146,  528,  539;  as  serpent,  103. 
See  Ceres,  Cocoa,  Demeter, 
Fertility-spirit,  Kurcha. 

Gratitude,  to  spirits,  26,  64,  80, 
87,  91,  140;  Chinese,  230;  Japa- 
nese, 279;  Roman,  533. 

Greece,  usages,  parallels  to,  9, 
44,  60,  76,  90,  101 ;  and  Egypt, 
329,  332;  and  Palestine,  440; 
Greeks  to  Mohammed,  472 ;  re- 
ligion of,  483  f. ;  gods  of  in 
Rome,  535,  538  f. 

Greek  (Eastern  Orthodox) 
Church,  568  f. 

Gregory,  566;  of  Nazianzus,  568, 
575 ;  and  the  Great,  576,  580. 

Grierson,  Sir  George,  217. 

Griffin,  Hittite,  439. 

Grotius,  H.,  587. 

Groves,  religious  use  of,  61,  124, 
138,  144,  151,  155,  170;  Ashera, 
366,  421;  Greek,  490.  See 
Trees. 


Gruppe,  O.,  15. 

Gudea,  345. 

Guru,  as  Presbyter,  represents 
God,  215;  Mohammedan  par- 
allel, 478. 

Gwenhwyfar,  Arthur's  wife,  as 
spectre,  132. 

Gwydion,  125,  131. 

Gyogi  Bosatsu,  293. 


Habakkuk,  43. 

Hachiman,  276. 

Hadad,  see  Adad. 

Hades,  485,  502. 

Hagiographa,  434. 

Hair,  as  soul-power,  33  f .,  49 ; 
in  America,  819 ;  of  victim,  102 ; 
of  sun,  103;  offered  to  sun, 
no;  Chinese  belief,  245;  as 
strength,  offered  to  the  dead, 
359- 

Hajj,  hagg,  473,  478. 

Halaka,  447. 

Hammer,  for  fertility,  see  Thor. 

Hammurabi,  345  f.,  350;  code  of, 
367  f- 

Han,  dynasty  and  scholars,  227, 
231,  238,  260. 

Hanbal,  Hanbalites,  school,  477, 
481. 

Hanifites,  school,  481. 

Harpies,  496. 

Harpocrates,  Egyptian  origin 
of,  325- 

Harrison,  Frederic,  2 ;  Miss  Jane, 
1 8,  496,  502,  504. 

Harvest-god,  283.  See  Fertility- 
spirit. 

Hathor,  cow-goddess,  321,  325. 

Healing,  gods  of,  95,  105;  in 
Greece,  487;  Apollo,  122;  Wo- 
den, 158;  in  Rome,  539.  See 
Aesculapius,  Dionysos,  Nas- 
atya. 

Hearn,  Lafcadio,  279. 

Heaven,  47  f.,  57,  62,  77,  88,  90, 
96,  loo,  105;  and  Earth,  228; 
as  God,  233,  378;  in  Zoroas- 


6o8 


INDEX 


trianism,  394  f . ;  seven  heavens 
and  hells,  467.  See  Eschatol- 
ogy,  Paradise. 

Hebe,  488. 

Hebrews,  65,  343,  358,  361,  366, 
595;  language  of,  440. 

Hegira,  hijra,  454  f. 

Hel,  154,  161,  164. 

Helen,  487. 

Hell,  47  f .,  57,  62,  77,  88,  90,  96  f . ; 
Lithuanian,  144;  Chinese,  247; 
Japanese,  277 ;  Egyptian, 
329  f. ;  Babylonian,  under- 
world, 348;  Hebrew,  426; 
Zoroastrian,  395  f . ;  Moham- 
medan, 466  f . ;  Greek,  502,  507 ; 
Christian,  581.  See  Hades, 
Mandaeans,  Sheol,  Yama. 

Henry,  King,  587. 

Henno,  159. 

Hepatoscopy,  361. 

Hephaistos,  486. 

Hera,  487  f. 

Heraclitus,  510. 

Hercules,  353,  526,  539;  Magus- 
anus,  163,  550. 

Heresy,  565.  See  Noetian,  Sa- 
bellian,  Patripassian,  Unitar- 
ian, etc. 

Hermes,  484,  486  f.,  503. 

Hero-cult,  no,  495.  See  Cul- 
ture-hero. 

Herod,  445. 

Herodotus,  36,  316,  318,  331,  389, 
501. 

Hesiod,  492,  497  f. 

Hestia,  486,  523.    See  Vesta. 

Hewitt,  J.  F.,  15. 

Hezekiah,  423  f. 

Hierodoulai,  temple-slaves,  wives 
of  gods,  32,  366,  425. 

High  Places,  424.     See  Moun- 
tain. 

Hilary,  574. 

Hillel,  school  of,  446,  449. 

Hinayana,  see  Buddhism. 

Hirth,  R,  225  f.,  229. 

Hittites,  345  f.,  348,  439- 

Hionen-tsang,  267. 

Holiness,  law  of,  434. 


Horn,  haoma,  171,  383  f.,  385,  411. 
See  Soma. 

Homer,  9,  228,  486  f.,  490,  494, 
498,  507- 

Honover,  prayer,  401. 

Homoousian,  of  same  nature, 
565  f. 

Hopi,  92. 

Hopkins,  Samuel,  574. 

Horace,  28,  44. 

Horse,  sacrifice  of,  56,  127;  In- 
die, 176;  divination  by,  153; 
-shoe  arch,  423;  Roman  Octo- 
ber horse,  519,  527. 

Horus,  hawk  and  sun,  314  f.,  320, 
322;  eye  of,  326. 

Hosea,  432  f.,  441. 

Hosein,  474! 

Hospitality,  365. 

Hosso  sect,  293. 

Hottentots,  24. 

House,  parts  of,  deified,  244. 

Huacas,  112,  114. 

Huang-Ti,  225. 

Huguenots,  590. 

Huns,  Brynhild's  husband  a 
Hun,  150;  and  Chinese,  226, 
239- 

Hurakan,  wind-god,  hurricane, 
97- 

Hurgronje,  C.  S.,  481. 

Husband,  R.  W.,  533. 

Huss,  584. 

Hybris,  492. 

Hygeia,  =539. 

Hyksos,  313. 

Hymns,   see  Gathas,   Song. 

Hyperdoulia,  doulia,  580. 

Hypostasis  of  divinity,  428,  439. 

Hystaspes,  Vishtaspa,  373. 


lamblichus,  511. 

Iblis,  463  f .    See  Satan. 

Ibn  Ezra,  448. 

Ideas,    powers,    440;    of    Plato, 

503  f  • 

Idols,  images,  of  savages,  20,  27, 
34,  41  f.,  60,  64,  76,  80,  97, 
109,  580;  Celtic,  124;  Slavic, 


INDEX 


609 


144  f. ;  Teutonic,  151 ;  Puranic, 
217;  cf.  220;  Chinese  tablets, 
247;  Japanese  idols,  284;  He- 
brew images  in  temple,  437; 
Mohammedan,  463,  469 ; 
Greek,  490,  510.  See  Saidas, 
Shedu. 

Idzumo,  283. 

leyasu,  301,  304. 

Jgigi,  349- 

Ignatius,  559,  575 ;  Loyola,  577. 

Ijma,  476  £.,  480. 

Ikhnaton,  334  f. 

Illapa,  light-god,  114. 

Illusion,  cosmic  power,  178,  213. 

Images,  see  Idols. 

Imam,  480,  482. 

Immaculate  conception,  of  Zoro- 
aster, 306;  of  Jesus,  579.  See 
Virgin  Birth. 

Immanence  of  God,  460;  Stoic, 
542;  Gnostic,  564.  See  Ve- 
clanta. 

Immortality,  not  in  gods,  105; 
religion  of  (Chinese),  272; 
Ameretat,  384;  hope  of,  406; 
Greek  hope,  503. 

Inari,  283. 

Incas,  io8f.,  nof. 

Incense,  105;  in  China,  241; 
Greek  use  of,  346;  Christian, 
5io,  546. 

Incest,  71,  in. 

India,  9,  12,  18,  88,  131 ;  religion 
of,  I70f. ;  missionary  to,  564. 

Indigitamenta,  487,  530. 

Indra,  like  Woden  a  Wanderer, 
157,  160 ;  cult  of,  172  f. ;  heaven 
of,  175 ;  wife  of,  523 ;  in  Japan, 
388;  Zoroastrian  god,  388. 
See  Andros. 

Infanticide,  456,  469. 

Initiation-rite,  34,  85,  116. 

Inquisition,  Peruvian,  118;  Ro- 
man Catholic,  578. 

Inspiration,  456. 

Intolerance,  in  China,  227,  266, 
514;  in  Japan,  300,  305;  Mo- 
hammedan, 458,  481 ;  Greek, 
504,  514 ;  Roman,  547  f. ;  565  f. ; 


Christian,  590,  592.  See  In- 
quisition. 

Intoxicants,  religious  use  of,  97, 
1 10,  115;  sake,  49;  octli,  99; 
soma,  171 ;  milk  for  wine,  537. 
See  Rabbit-gods. 

Irenaeus,  562  f.,  564,  566,  570, 

575- 

Irmin,  155. 

Isaiah,  428,  430,  432  f .,  438,  441, 
443- 

Ise,  281  f . ;  Ise-o-harai,  282. 

Ishtar,  325,  346,  348,  358,  422; 
daughter  of  moon-god,  361. 

Isis,  320  f.,  326,  364;  in  Greece, 
509 ;  in  Rome,  539,  541 ;  Ger- 
man form,  151. 

Islam,  resignation,  457.  See 
Mohammedanism. 

Ismailites,  480. 

Israel,  children  of,  413;  four 
tribes,  420;  serpent-worship 
of,  315;  desolated,  421.  See 
Hebrews. 

Itzamma,  95. 

Iza-nagi,  -nami,  280,  301. 

Jabarites,  476. 

Jabneh,  446. 

Jackson,  A.  V.  W.,  413. 

Jacob,  of  Babylon,  367. 

Jacobi,  H.,  184. 

Jains,  i8of. 

Jansen,  Jansenists,  578. 

Janus,  518,  523,  526. 

Japan,    religion    of,    275  f . ;    and 

China,   285,   288;    families   of, 

285,   291  f. ;    patriots  of,   286  f. 
Jastrow,  Morris,  Jr.,  10,  44,  353, 

361. 

Jatakas,  195,  198. 
Jehovah,  see  Yahweh. 
Jeremiah,    425^,    429^,    432  f., 

434  f.  J  441. 
Jerome,  572  f. 

Jerusalem,  Jebus,  424,  430  f.,  432. 
Jesuits,  578,  582;  Japanese  sect, 

294;  in  Japan,  304. 
Jesus,  454,  552. 
Jevons,  Dr.  F.  B.,  18,  74, 


6io 


INDEX 


Jews,  in  China,  272;  and  Bab- 
ylonian festival,  362 ;  and  Mo- 
hammed, 455,  462;  and  Rome, 
547.  See  Hebrews,  Israel. 

Jimmu,  Jingo,  276,  281. 

Jinns,  365,  452  f.,  456,  463,  472  f. 

Jishidzume,  279. 

Job,  443,  462. 

Jodo  sect,  292,  296  f. 

John,  as  author  of  fourth  gos- 
pel, 533,  556;  of  Damascus, 
568,  57i,  575- 

Josaphat,  St.,  form  of  Buddha, 
580. 

Joseph,  316,  342,  428. 

Josephus,  437,  446. 

Josiah,  423,  426,  434. 

Joten,  see  Giants. 

Judah,  424  f . 

Judaism  and  Zoroastrianism, 
390,  406. 

Judgment,  Day  of,  386,  393. 

Julian,  Apostate,  412,  550. 

Juno,  487,  522,  526. 

Jupiter,  Feretrius,  461,  516;  op- 
timus,  520;  Vediovis,  523; 
Dolichenus,  etc.,  540;  priestess 
of,  518;  Celtic  forms  of,  122  f. 
See  Dyaus. 

Justification,  587. 

Justin,  Martyr,  560,  564  f.,  572, 
580,  582. 

Ka,  311,  327,  393- 

Kaabah,  452. 

Kabbala,  Cabalah,  428,  449. 

Kadar,  Kadarites,  476. 

Kaira  Kan,  54. 

Kali,  61,  207. 

Kama,  Desire,  love,  god,  cosmic 

principle,  185,  207. 
Kami,     Kamui,     powers,     gods, 

47  f . ;    -dama,   284 ;    -no-michi, 

276  f.,  281. 
Kamlamie,   acting   the    Shaman, 

56. 

Karaites,  448. 
Karakia,  63  f .,  72. 
Karma,    2,    177,    184  f.,    ingwa, 

293- 


Kashyapa,  in  China,  271. 

Kegon  sect,  293. 

Keith,  A.  B.,  176. 

Kekrops,  21. 

Kennedy,  J.,  196. 

Keres,  496. 

Khani,  western  Semitic  god,  367 

Kharejites,  474. 

Khensu,  320. 

Khojas,  480. 

Khshathra  Vairya,  383,  385. 

King,  taboo  of,  71  f. ;  Celtic,  as 
priest,  135,  ii7f. ;  Egyptian, 
331 ;  deified  in  Babylon,  345, 
365;  king-killing,  362.  See 
Balder,  Osiris. 

King,  Chinese  Canon,  224. 

Kingu,  350  f. 

Kingsley,  Mary  H.,  30. 

Kioto  sects,  292. 

Kirke  as  hawk,  133. 

Kiyas,  476. 

Knights  Templar,  577. 

Knots,  70,  464,  517. 

Kobalts,  146. 

Kobo,  294. 

Kojiki,  275  f.,  280. 

Kolarians,  170  f.,  175. 

Koran,  452  f.,  456,  476. 

Kore,  488,  538;  American  form, 
99. 

Korea,  275  f.,  288. 

Koreish,  454  f.,  474. 

Kra,  30  f. 

Kretschmer,  P.,  364. 

Krishna,  174,  209  f. 

Kuannon,  Kuanyin,  270,  299. 

Kublai  Khan,  267. 

Kukulkan,  95. 

Kultur  of  ancient  Germans,  149. 

Kuloskap,  83. 

Kurcha,  Gurcha,  142. 

Lacouperie,  Terriende,  226. 
Ladder,  in  grave,  145;  to  climb 

to  gods,  329. 
Lagash,  344  f. 
Lake,    worship    of,    uof.,    113; 

Paradise  under,  132;  Prussian, 

138;  German,  167. 


INDEX 


611 


Lamp  at  shrine,  284. 

Lang,  Andrew,  3. 

Langdon,  $.,  357,  363. 

Language  of  gods,  89. 

Lao-tse,  249  f .,  258,  260,  265,  301. 

Lar,      familiaris,      523;      Lares, 

larvae,  525;  of  vicus,  546. 
Lay  of  the  Harper,  311. 
Lectisternium,  540. 
Le  Fevre,  588. 
Legate,  last  martyr,  592. 
Legge,  James,  227,  229,  259. 
Lemuria,  527. 
Leo,  the  Great,  573. 
Ler,  Lear,  133. 
Levites,  436;  Peruvian  form  of, 

115- 

Lex  talionis,  367,  417. 

Licius,  Lieh-tse,  249,  254,  256. 

Lie-demon,  382  f .,  387  f .,  400. 

Life-elixir,  250. 

Light,  as  spirit  or  soul,  178; 
light-gods,  61,  114,  124,  172; 
God  of  light,  411;  God  as 
light,  563;  feast  of,  see  Chan- 
uka,  Lykos. 

Lightning,  as  serpent,  82 ;  as  red 
man,  91 ;  as  female  demon, 
115;  -taboo,  as  lucky,  115,  160, 
517;  Shiva  as  lightning-god, 
208;  as  dragon's  sword,  279. 

Li-Ki,  224,  238. 

Lillooet  bear-sacrifice,  51. 

Limbus,   infantum,   patrum,  581. 

Lingam,  phallus,  207. 

Lion-sun,  317. 

Livy,  21. 

Llama-idols,  112. 

Lloyd,  Arthur,  271. 

Logi,  Loki,  154,  161. 

Logos,  germ  of,  343 ;  doctrine, 
441,  5io,  556;  in  Origen,  565. 

Loisy,  A.,  418,  430. 

Lollards,  584. 

Lombard,  575,  580. 

Longevity,  266. 

Lord  of  Being,  175 ;  lords  as 
Slavic  gods,  42. 

Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  587. 

Lotus,  see  Buddhistic  literature. 


Love,  as  African  god,  32;  Na- 
huan  goddess,  99;  in  Bud- 
dhism, 190;  in  Empedocles, 
500;  in  China,  257,  259;  love- 
feasts,  in  India,  220;  in  Egypt, 
342;  Agape,  560,  570;  Metho- 
dist, 592.  See  Aphrodite, 
Kama. 

Lucretius,  542. 

Lud,  London,  134.    See  Lug. 

Ludi  Romani,  see  Games. 

Lug,  Lyons,  125,  130,  134  f.  See 
Lud. 

Luke,  gospel  of,  533. 

Lung-Hen,  263. 

Lupercalia,  wolf-warding  rite, 
495,  528;  Slavic  form,  142. 

Lustration,  of  cattle,  etc.,  129, 
152,  282,  527,  545,  581. 

Luther,  Martin,  297,  308,  581  f., 
585- 

Lyall,  Sir  Alfred,  3. 

Lykos,  Lykeios,  487  f . 

Lyman,  B.  S.,  a  Japanese  god, 
302. 

Ma,  485,  539. 

Maat,  326. 

Maccabees,  444  f. 

Macedonius,  Bishop,  sect  of,  568. 

Madhva,  Hindu  reformer,  214. 

Madonna,  in  India,  213;  in 
Egypt,  343.  See  Mary. 

Magi,  375,  384,  402,  553. 

Magic,  16,  38,  42,  68,  77,  81,  in ; 
Celtic,  127  f.,  129,  133;  Ger- 
man, 152;  Indie,  174;  Chinese, 
239  f.,  266;  Egyptian,  329,  331, 
340  f.;  Babylonian,  349;  Medi- 
terranean, 483;  Greek,  508  f.  ; 
Roman,  517,  528;  Christian, 
563,  581. 

Magna  Mater,  412,  539. 

Mahavira,  Vardhamana,  Jain 
founder,  180  f. 

Mahayana,  see  Buddhism. 

Mahdi,  473. 

Maia,  Maiestas,  goddess,  538. 

Maimonides,  Moses,  448.  See 
Thomas  Aquinas. 


6l2 


INDEX 


Maitreya,  192. 

Maize-goddess,  see  Grain-spirit. 

Malik,  school  of,  481 ;  angel,  466, 
472. 

Mama  Ocllo,  in,  113. 

Mana,  power,  18,  35,  661; 
Roman  goddess,  538. 

Manco  Capac,  in. 

Mandaeans,  410;  their  descent 
into  hell,  559. 

Manes,  55,  172,  385;  Di,  524. 
See  Ancestors,  Ghosts,  Lares. 

Manetho,  312. 

Mani,  Manes,  Manichaeism, 
200,  267,  272,  410,  512,  571. 

Manito,  82  f.,  286. 

Mannhardt,  W.,  12,  153,  167. 

Mannus,  German,  primeval  man, 
151;  Manu,  Hindu  primeval 
man,  14,  174,  211. 

Marcion,  560,  570,  575. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  548. 

Marduk,  Amorite  god  of  Baby- 
lon, 315,  346  f.,  348  f. ;  as  Jupi- 
ter, 360;  festival  of,  363.  See 
Mordecai. 

Mariolatry  and  Artemis-cult, 
557;  opposition  to,  567,  572, 

579- 

Mark,  gospel  of,  533. 
Marriage,    30,    63,    -taboo,    71; 

child-,  220. 
Mars,  516  f.,  518  f. ;  and  Moles, 

538 ;  impious,  545 ;  Celtic  forms 

forms  of,  122  f .,  127 ;  as  Ziu, 

155. 

Marti,  K.,  417. 

Martineau,  J.,  4. 

Martyrs,  565;  prayers  to,  580. 

Mary,  mother  of  Jesus,  in  Mo- 
hammedanism, 454  f. ;  see 
Mariolatry,  Virgin ;  Queen, 

5°I; 

Masai,  25. 

Masks,  funeral,  92,  109,  117,  524. 

Mass,  563,  575. 

Massebas,  421,  425.     See   Phal- 

licism,  Stone. 
Materialism,  in  China  and  India, 

262,  264. 


Matriarchy,  matrilinear  succes- 
sion, 141,  365 

Matthew,  gospel  of,  533. 

Mauss,  M.,  12. 

Mayas,  84  f. 

May-day,  129;  May-pole,  166. 

Mazda,  Mazdakas,  373,  384,  391; 
in  China,  272. 

Mazdak,  reformer,  410. 

Mecca,  453  f.,  468,  473. 

Medes,  375,  389,  402. 

Mediator,  Marduk  as,  348;  Mo- 
hammed, 467;  Christian,  580. 

Medicine-men,  82,  84.  See 
Priests,  Wizards. 

Medina,  Prince  of,  458. 

Mediterranean  culture,  16,  120, 
495  f .  See  Minoan. 

Megalesia,  529,  541,  556. 

Melanchthon,  585. 

Melech,  Melek,  Moloch,  365. 

Memphis,  as  religious  centre, 
332.. 

Mencius,  224,  249,  257  f.,  262. 

Menes,  312. 

Mennpnites,  584. 

Menzies,  A.,  18. 

Mercury,  489;  Celtic  and  Ger- 
man forms,  122,  155. 

Merit,  586. 

Messiah,  Messianic  idea,  Aztec, 
103;  Egyptian,  337;  Zoroas- 
trian,  396,  407 ;  Hebraic,  441  f . ; 
Christian,  554. 

Metamorphosis,  of  animals,  in 
China,  240,  243;  of  gods,  158, 
284. 

Metawile  sect,  481. 

Metempsychosis,  21,  131  f.,  147, 
165,  170,  184,  261,  329,  448  f., 
467,  502,  505. 

Methodists,  591  f. 

Meyer,  E.,  409. 

Mexican  religion,  64,  94  f . 

Mia.  281. 

Michabo,  83  f.,  87. 

Mictlan,  97. 

Migration  of  culture,  15  f.,  64, 
76,  94,  1 08,  115,  122,  272. 

Mihrab,  423. 


INDEX 


6l3 


Mih  Ti,  Moh,  257,  260. 

Mikado.  277  f.,  281,  283  f.,  286. 

Millerites,  576. 

Mills,  L.,4o8f. 

Milk,   sea  of,  56;    Milky   Way, 

125,  394- 

Mimir,  157,  159. 
Minerva,  523,  526;   Celtic  form 

pf,   122  f.,  131. 

Minoan  culture,  483,  517. 

Minotaur,  Indie,  174. 

Miracles,  555,  5&>. 

Mirror,  of  fire-god,  102,  114;  of 
Aztec  sun-god,  103 ;  of  Japa- 
nese sun-goddess,  281  f. 

Mishnah,  447. 

Missions,  510,  567. 

Mitanni,  388. 

Mithra,  Mitra,  172,  385,  404, 
410  f.,  glory  of,  396,  540;  and 
Christianity,  548,  581. 

Mixcoatl,  103. 

Mohammed,  42,  452  f . ;  Moham- 
medanism in  India,  215  f . ;  in 
China,  272;  and  Jewish  relig- 
ion, 449,  471 ;  sects  and 
schools,  481 ;  parallels,  460  f. 

Monasteries,  290;  of  Eastern 
Church,  569 ;  in  the  West,  576 ; 
Egyptian  origin  of,  576. 

Monergism,  574. 

Mongols  in  China,  267;  Mongo- 
lian influence,  229,  275. 

Monism,  Chinese,  263.  See 
Upanishads,  Vedanta. 

Monotheism,  in  India,  213,  216, 
475;  Chinese,  229;  Egyptian, 
333  f->  342 ;  tendency  toward, 
Babylon,  349,  364;  Hebraic, 
428,  431;  Greek,  497,  500; 
Mithraic,  548. 

Montanus,  533,  561,  583. 

Months,  sacred  to  spirits  and 
gods,  384. 

Moon,  29,  109  f.,  112,  114;  as 
birth-god,  99;  cult  of,  Slavic, 
139;  German,  151  f.,  154; 
menu,  142  ;  -plant,  385;  in 
China,  Japan,  244,  280; 
Babylon,  lord  of  knowledge, 


320,  345,  361 ;  in  Tyre  and  Si- 
don,  422;  and  Sabbath,  362, 
425;  Zoroastrian  cult  of,  383; 
Greek,  488.  See  Sin,  Sonuu 
Zodiac. 

Moravians,  584,  591. 

Mordecai,  362,  450. 

Morrison,  W.  D.,  446. 

Moses,  359,  415,  418,  440,  557  J 
code  of,  368,  426,  435  f. ; 
burned  his  tongue,  462 ;  second 
and  third,  see  Maimonides. 

Mother-goddess,  34,  124,  149; 
Dravidian,  170;  of  life,  Semi- 
tic, 346,  421,  483  f.,  494;  Ma- 
tralia,  529;  Magna  Mater,  366; 
Mothers'  Night,  132,  153; 
Mother  of  God,  579  f. 

Mothers  as  demons,  Aztec, 
Hindu,  105,  207;  Mothers  of 
Letts,  140  f. 

Moulton,  j.  H.,  402. 

Mountain,  god  of,  thunder  of, 
dance  to,  100,  114;  Shiva  as, 
208;  Enlil,  348;  Zafa,  Marwa, 
452 ;  hills  as  holy,  421 ;  as 
clouds,  461;  hold  down  earth, 
465. 

Mourning,  21,  30,  33,  49,  89; 
cause  of,  240;  in  Japan,  278, 

359,  365. 

Miiller,  Max,  5. 

Mummification,  see  embalming. 

Murray,  G.,  508. 

Muses,  486;  lymph  and  nymph, 
528. 

Music,  30,  34,  78,  92;  in  Chinese 
cult,  231,  235;  Hebraic,  437: 
See  Hymns,  Song. 

Mut,  320  f. 

Mutazilites,  475,  477. 

Mysteries,  20  f.,  26,  60,  64,  87, 
92,  172;  Greek,  346,  498,  502  f. 

Mysticism,  Vedic,  178;  erotic, 
212  f.,  366;  Japanese,  300;  tin- 
Semitic,  448;  late  Mohamme- 
dan, 475,  478 f.;  Greek,  483; 
Roman,  540,  544;  Mediter- 
ranean, 595;  sensuous  Chris- 
tian, 569,  591. 


614 


INDEX 


Nabi,  429. 

Nabonidus,  344  f. ;  daughter   of, 

366. 
Nabu,  Nebo,  347  f . ;  as  Mercury, 

369- 
Nagarjuna,  199. 

Naiku  shrine,  282. 

Name,  in  baptism,  48,  65;  hypo- 
stasis  of,  70;  taboo  of,  71,  240; 
of  God,  concealed,  71;  Holy 
Name  of  Sikhs,  219;  mean 
names,  240;  power  of,  351, 
581. 

Nannar,  348. 

Nara  sects,  281,  292  f. 

Narada,  388. 

Naram-Sin,  344  f.;  horns  of,  361. 

Narayana,  211. 

Nasatya,  Healer,  Naonhaithya, 
385,  388. 

Nassau,  R.  H.,  14,  36. 

Naturism,  31  f.,  59  f.,  76  f.,  79, 
90,  107,  139,  170  f.,  236  f.,  278, 
376,  423,  462,  478,  486,  523- 

Naville,  E.,  428. 

Necessity,  as  divinity,  501. 

Necromancy,  359.     See  Oracles. 

Nebuchadrezzar,  347,  434. 

Neeshima,  school  of,  307. 

Nehemiah,  434  f.,  443. 

Nemetona,  133. 

Neo-Confucianism,  265,  304. 

Neolithic  man,  8. 

Neo-Platonism,  441  f.,  449,  479, 
5ii,  571- 

Nephthys,  327,  339. 

Neptunus,  524,  529. 

Nergal,  348  f . ;  as  Mars,  360 ;  fes- 
tival of,  363. 

Nero,  547,  565. 

Nerthus,  151. 

Nestorius,  567;  Nestorians  in 
China,  267,  272,  208 ;  Nestorian 
monument,  273;  and  Moham- 
medans, 475. 

New  Hollanders,  20. 

New    Year,    130,    450;    Roman, 

529- 

Nicean  theology,  571.  See 
Creed. 


Nichiren,  292,  294,  299. 

Nicolaitans,  364. 

Nihongi,  275. 

Nimrod,  epic  of,  353,  369. 

Nineveh,  347;  Ishtar  of,  348. 

Nin-deities,  345,  347;   Ninib   as 
Saturn,  360. 

Nirgrantha  sect,  180. 

Nirvana,  185,  192,  194. 

Nisaba,  Western  Semitic  pa- 
tron of  Code,  367. 

Nixies,  166. 

Nobunaga,  291,  303  f. 

Noetian  heresy,  565. 

Nominalists,  578. 

Norito,  283. 

Norns,  163,  165. 

Nous,  Reason  (q.  v.)  as  divinity, 
50i,  505,  506,  508,  548. 

Nuada,  Nudd,  133  f.,  156. 

Numa,  517,  530,  535. 

Numbers,  Pythagorean,  500 ; 
lucky,  517;  three,  33,  140,  173, 
239,  241,  486;  four,  86,  96,  241, 
383;  rivers,  105,  356;  Chinese 
fives,  264;  seven,  Brahmanic, 
Semitic,  33,  54,  362;  411,  462, 
467,  508;  eight,  Buddhistic, 
280;  and  Mohammedan,  466; 
thirty-three  gods,  385 ;  seventy- 
one  or  more  sects,  481.  See 
Triad. 

Numina,   489,    5*8,    523;    Slavic, 
139  f . ;      Teutonic,      164.     See 
Functional  gods. 
Nusairiah  sect,  478. 

Oath,  by  thigh,  68;  by  tree,  166; 
by  genius,  523. 

Obeah  magic  cult,  30,  40. 

Occam,  579. 

Odhin,  156,  160.    See  Woden. 

Offerings,  of  jewellery  and  in- 
cense, no;  to  gods  and  Manes, 
175;  called  Great,  in  Japan, 
279;  Hebrew,  436.  See  Sacri- 
fice. 

Ogma,  131,  133- 

Ohoharahi,  282. 

Oldenberg,  H.,  183  f. 


INDEX 


615 


Omar,  453,  463. 

Omayyads,  474  f. 

One-eyed  god,  Cyclops,  100,  158. 

Ontology,  579. 

Ops,  Consus,  523,  527. 

Opus  operatum,  582. 

Oracles,  Mayan,  98;  from  caves, 

114;    tree-,    127;    grave-,    132; 

from  dead,  359 ;  Egyptian,  329 ; 

ark  as,  417;   law-giving,  429; 

Greek,  404,  501,  513;  Roman, 

533 ;  of  Sibyl,  531.    See  Divin- 
ation, Osiris. 

Ordeals,  26,  34,  39,  49,  152. 
Orcus,  524. 
Order,    Holy,    376  f.    See    Rita, 

Tao. 

Origen,  564  f .,  572,  575,  580  f. 
Ormuzd,  Ahura  Mazda,  373,  377, 

402. 
Orphism,    404  f.,   497,   499,    502, 

504  f. 
Osiris,  161,  311,  318,  320  f.,  322  f., 

325,  339  f-,  364,  556  f. 
Ossian,  123,  136. 
Othman,  474. 
Ouranos,  27. 
Ovid,  547. 
Oyomei  school,  304. 

Pachacamac,  113. 

Pagoda,  in  China,  267. 

Pairika,  Peri,  388. 

Pakht,  317. 

Pales,  Parilia,  545. 

Palestine,  and  Egypt,  313,  332; 
and  Babylon,  347  f.,  366  f. 

Pali,  199. 

Pan,  486  f.,  503;  in  India,  212. 

Panaetius,  542  f. 

Pantaenus,  564. 

Pantheism,  213 ;  Egyptian,  333  f. ; 
Orphic,  497,  504. 

Paradise,  American,  88;  of 
Tlaloc,  105;  Babylonian,  356; 
of  India  and  Iran,  396;  He- 
braic, 419;  Mohammedan,  459, 
465  f. 

Parents,  religiously  strangled, 
63 ;  Parentalia,  524,  528. 


Parjanya,    138;    American   par- 
allel, 100. 
Parsis,  391,  410. 
Passover,  417,  420,  425,  436. 
Patagonians,  20,  75,  108,  no. 
Patriarchs,  of  Bible,  418,  426  f . ; 

of  Eastern  Church,  569. 
Patrick,  St.,  567. 
Patripassian  heresy,  565. 
Paul,  St.,  510,  548,  552  f.,  555  f., 

575,  582 ;  as  Gnostic,  563 ;  Acts 

of,  580;  of  Samosata,  565. 
Pax,  Dei,  no;  530;  Romana,  546. 
Pelagius,  214,  567,  57 1  *•>  574- 
Pelasgians,  483  f. 
Penates,  50,  523,  547 ;  Slavic,  146. 
Pentateuch,  368,  419  f.,  426  f. 
Pentecost,  425,  434,  436. 
Perkunas,  138  f.,  140. 
Persecution,  see  Intolerance. 
Persephone,  485,  488,  494. 
Peru,  religion  of,  108  f. 
Pessimism,  481,  507. 
Peter,    St.,    553,    559,    562,    572; 

Hermit,  584. 

Petrie,  W.  Flinders,  342. 
Pfleiderer,  O.,  4,  18. 
Phallicism,    24,    26,    42,    60,    79; 

Slavic,     144;     Teutonic,     162; 

Indie,  207,  209;  Chinese,  246; 

Japanese,  283;  Roman,  538. 
Pharisees,  442,  444  f.,  451. 
Pharaoh,  313,  321,  332. 
Phenomenal    gods,    See    Natur- 

ism. 

Philaret,  569. 
Philistines,  332,  420,  424. 
Philo  Judaeus,  376,  441,  511,  556. 
Philosophy  in  religion,  172,  334; 

Jewish,    449;     Greek,    499  f.; 

Roman,     541.     See     Vedanta, 

Yang. 

Phoenicians,  420  f.,  422,  426. 
Phoenix,  Chinese,  269 ;  Egyptian, 

318. 

Pied  Piper,  Celtic  myth,  133. 
Pietists  of  Germany,  591. 
Pig,   taboo   of,   70;   divinity  of, 

126,  151;  sacrifice  of,  170;  boar 

of  Shiva,  207;  in  China,  242; 


6i6 


INDEX 


in     Egypt,     318;     in     Greece, 
494  f .,  496 ;  in  Rome,  537.     See 
Boar,  Suovitaurilia. 
Pilgrimage,  no,  116,  315;  Hajj, 

473- 

Pindar,  religion  of,  503. 

Pitakas,  197  f. 

Planets,  114,  244.    See  Astrology, 

Plato,  3,  376,  503,  509- 

Plautus,  541. 

Pleiades,  114. 

Plotinus,  511,  564. 

Plutarch,  327,  376,  384  f.,  407, 
548. 

Pluto,  539- 

Polycarp,  573. 

Polygamy,  440,  456. 

Polynesian  gods,  60  f. 

Polytheism,  in  Israel,  424.  See 
Gods,  Monotheism. 

Pompey,  445. 

Pontifex,  523,  530!.,  534,  543. 

Poorah,  36. 

Pope,  305,  569,  577;  as  head  of 
Church,  572;  two,  577;  papal 
power,  586;  Victor,  570;  Pius 
V,  580;  Pius  IX,  579,  Alexan- 
der VI,  585. 

Porphyry,  511. 

Poseidon,  484  f.,  487. 

Prayer,  79  f .,  85,  87,  91 ;  Aztec 
and  Peruvian,  107;  German, 
to  dead,  164;  in  Japan,  278, 
283  f . ;  -wheel,  295  ;  Babylon- 
ian, 349 ;  Mohammedan,  468 ; 
Greek,  490 ;  Christian,  569,  575, 
580.  See  Honover. 

Predestination,  571,  590. 

Pre-logical  magic,  13,  21. 

Priests,  38,  63  f . ;  of  America,  84, 
no;  Aztec,  103,  106;  Peruvian, 
115;  as  ruler,  97;  chief  as 
priest  or  god,  117;  Celtic,  127, 
136;  Slavic,  140,  144;  German, 
150;  Indie,  Avestan,  171  f.,  222, 
404;  Chinese,  246,  267;  Shinto, 
283 1  Egyptian,  330  f. ;  Bab- 
ylonian, 366;  Hebrew,  424,  436; 
Greek,  400;  Roman,  529; 
Priestly  Code,  428  f.,  434  f. 


Prophets,  419,  425  f.,  429  f.,  435. 

See  Mohammed. 
Propitiation-service,  283. 
Protestant  theology,  585,  587. 
Prussian  savages,  138. 
Psalms,    Babylonian,    363,    368; 

Jewish,  443.     See  Gathas. 
Psychology  in  Buddhism,  188. 
Ptah,  310,  316,  320,  324. 
Puja,  43. 

Puranas,  217  f.,  276. 
Purdah,  469. 

Purgation,    see    Purification. 
Purgatory,  American,  88;  Zoro- 

astrian,     395;      Jewish,     443; 

Christian,  581. 
Purification,    40,    purgation,    86, 

97.  363;  by  washing,  404;   by 

fire,  527 ;  Greek,  491 ;  Sabbath, 

362.     See  Taboo,  Washing. 
Purim,  362,  450. 
Puritans,  591  f. 
Pygmies,  20,  24. 
Pyramids,  313,  322. 
Pythagoras,  494,  499  *-,  503,  542. 

Quakers,  591  f . ;  of  Japan,  295. 
Quarters,  sacrifice  to  four,  241, 

244;    gods   of   in    Egypt,   320. 

See  Directions,  Winds. 
Queensland,  20. 
Quetzalcoatl,  95  f.,  102  f. 
Quipu,  108. 
Quirinus,  516,  520. 

Rabbit-gods,  90,  99. 

Radha,  mistress  of  Krishna, 
215. 

Rainbow,  32;  bridge,  394;  god- 
dess of  birth,  95;  of  women, 
109;  as  god,  100;  servant  of 
sun  and  moon,  112;  causes 
dumbness,  114. 

Rain-making  gods,  140. 

Ram,  of  Tiu,  156;  Chinese  sac- 
rifice of,  242;  Egyptian  ba, 

317. 

Rama,  174,  209  f. ;  Ramanand, 
214,  Ramanuja,  213;  Rama 
sects,  215. 


INDEX 


6l7 


Rama-Krishna,  222. 

Ramadhan,  fast,  468,  473. 

Rammon,  Rimmon,  346,  422. 

Ransom,  see  Redemption. 

Realists,  578. 

Re(Ra),  Sun-god,  314  f.,  320  f., 
323  f. ;  full-form,  316. 

Reason  as  Divinity,  Chinese, 
263,  265;  Greek,  See  Nous. 

Rechabites,  417,  430. 

Redemption,  562 ;  ransom  paid  to 
Satan,  565*  575;  other  views 
of,  5r*)»  572  f. ;  particular,  590. 

Reformers,  582,  584  f.;  English 
Reformation,  591. 

Regeneration,  savage,  84;  by 
baptism,  86;  see  Christian  re- 
ligion. 

Reinach,  S.,  42. 

Reincarnation,  89.  See  Metem- 
psychosis. 

Religion,  as  fear,  3;  as  a  sacred 
tree,  60;  tribal,  364.  See 
Definitions,  Sebas. 

Repentance,  useless,  242;  390  f. 

Resurrection,  62,  115;  Celtic, 
132;  Indie,  175;  Egyptian,  340; 
Zoroastrian  and  Christian,  406, 
408 ;  Hebrew,  <\\z ;  Moham- 
medan, 454,  457,  462  f.,  468; 
Greek,  506;  of  Attis,  556. 

Reville,  A.,  4  f .,  10,  18. 

Rhadamanthus,  332,  386,  502. 

Ridge  way,  W.,  176,  484,  502. 

Rigantona,  129,  131. 

Rig  Veda,  172  f. 

Right  Order,  248.  See  Rita, 
Tao. 

Rimac,  Lima,  murmur,  of  oracle, 
114. 

Risley,  Sir  Herbert,  19. 

Rita,  Right  (Order),  248,  326. 

Ritsu  sect,  293. 

Ritual,  Chinese,  238;  Roman, 
545- 

Rivers,  60;  of  hell,  33,  96,  105; 
four  of  Aztec  Paradise,  105; 
cult  of,  Celtic,  125;  Chinese, 
231  f.,  234;  Greek,  486;  Roman, 
538;  of  Eden,  356. 


Rome,  Roman,  religion,  5i6f. 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  583 ;  and 
Palestine,  445 ;  Church  of, 
562  f.,  565  f.,  570,  572. 

Rosary,  prototype  of,  64;  Indie 
origin  of,  207;  Japanese  and 
Mohammedan  adoption  of,  298, 
481. 

Rudra,  205,  208,  385. 

Runes,  158. 


Saadia,  449,  467. 

Sabaoth,    lord   of,   battle   hosts, 

425- 

Sabazios,  Zeus,  509. 

Sabbath,  362,  415,  420,  438,  461. 

Sabellian  heresy,  565. 

Sabitu,  354. 

Sacer,  holy,  accursed,  531. 

Sacraments,  581. 

Sacrifice,  savage,  II,  30,  32,  56, 
60,  64,  87;  smoke-,  85;  -straw, 
91;  Mayan,  96  f.,  100;  Aryan, 
barhis,  171 ;  human,  Aztec,  102, 
104;  S.  American,  no  f.,  Greek, 
421,  491;  foundation,  116,  426; 
Celtic,  127  f.;  German,  151  f., 
157;  beer-,  172;  for  divination, 
144;  Chinese,  231,  239,  141; 
cost,  242 ;  Japanese,  278  f .,  280, 
289;  Egyptian,  33 if.;  Semitic, 
349,  365,  413,  42i,  426,  436,  459, 
469,  478;  Zoroastrian,  404; 
Roman,  534;  vicarious,  492. 
See  Communion,  Offerings, 
Scape-goat. 

Sadducees,  436,  443  f.,  451,  554. 

Sahajiya  sect,  202. 

Saicho,  Dengyo,  293. 

Saidas,  43. 

Saints,  Mohammedan,  479;  gods 
as,  510,  545:  veneration  of, 
572;  intercession  of,  580;  per- 
severance of,  590. 

Sake,  275.     See  Intoxicants. 

Salii,  34,  518. 

Saliva,  power  of,  34,  92. 

Salvation,  563,  565 ;  Salvationists, 
593- 


6i8 


INDEX 


Samajas,  219  f. 

Samaria,  420,  422,  430;  Samari- 
tans, 443  f. 

Samhain,  130. 

Samoyeds,  18. 

Samson,  353. 

Samuel,  parallel  to,  355,  429,  442. 

Samurai,  286;  visit  the  Pope,  305. 

Sanhedrin,  446  f. 

Sankarshana,  210  f. 

Sankhya,  dtialistic  system,  179, 
184,  207. 

Sanron  sect,  293. 

Saoshyant,  saviour,  375,  395;  as 
Zoroaster,  396,  407. 

Sargon,  3441-,  424,  433,  557- 

Sassanides,  Sassanians,  386,  398, 
406;  and  Mohammedans,  475. 

Satan,  33,  50;  Erlik,  54;  not 
named,  71 ;  evil  deity  in  Peru, 
117;  in  Egypt,  321;  in  Avesta, 
409 ;  Hebrew,  438  f . ;  Christian, 
564 f.,  575-  See  (Mara)  Death, 
Iblis. 

Saturnus,  523,  527  f-,  537,  545) 
Saturnalia,  450. 

Saussaye,  C.  de  la,  43. 

Saviour,  in  Japan,  298;  in 
Avesta,  see  Saoshyant;  Aescu- 
lapius, 559;  Christ,  ibid. 

Savonarola,  584. 

Sayce,  A.  H.,  315,  325,  352. 

Saxneat,  155. 

Scape-goat  sacrifice,  65  ;  Chinese, 
244;  Japanese,  280,  283;  He- 
braic, 417;  Greek,  491 ;  Roman, 

Schleiermacher,  F.,  4. 

Scotus  Erigena,  578. 

Scribes,  435  f .,  446  f. 

Sea  as  god,   24,   no,   112,    133; 

579;  sea-spirits,  166. 
Seasons,  deified,  244. 
Sebas,  religion  as  fear,  3,  7. 
Sebek,  318. 
Sects,  Indie,  179,  203;  reforming, 

205  f .,     219  f. ;     Mohammedan, 

481 ;  Christian,  593.    See  Don- 

atus,  Macedonius,  etc. 
Secret  Societies,  see  Mysteries. 


Sedna,  77. 

Self  as  soul  and  All-soul,  At- 
man,  178. 

Semi-Arians,-Pelagians,  568,  574. 

Semites,  religion  of,  420 f;  cul- 
ture, 16;  connexion  with 
Egypt,  332,  343;  contrast  with 
Aryans,  365.  See  Babylon, 
Hebrew,  etc. 

Sen,  Keshub  Chunder,  219. 

Seneca,  3,  548,  552. 

Sennacherib,  347,  424,  433. 

Sensuality,  see  Mysticism,  Phal- 
licism. 

Septuagint,  440. 

Seraph,  422,  439. 

Serapis,  316  f. 

Serpent,  32,  82,  go,  112;  plumed, 
92;  bird-,  93,  95  f.;  lightning 
as,  109;  belief  of  Celts,  127; 
Slavs,  139,  142  f . ;  India,  170, 
209;  the  Midhgardh-snake, 
154;  Chinese,  246;  Egyptian, 
314;  Hebrew,  415!;  Greek, 
486,  494 ;  and  eagle,  360 ;  and 
Aesculapius,  537.  See  Back- 
bone, Dragon. 

Servetus,  585,  589. 

Set,  318,  321,  326,  339  f. 

Sex  as  religious  element,  34,  61, 
68,  422;  goddess  of,  99;  sex- 
dualism,  366.  See  Ashera, 
Mysticism,  Phallicism,  Sen- 
suality, Shakti. 

Shabatum,  362. 

Shadow,  soul,  32,  88,  105,  245; 
shadow-land,  115. 

Shafiites,  481. 

Shakti,  208,  217. 

Shaman,  Shamanism,  22,  53  f . ; 
Polynesian,  65 ;  Eskimo,  78 ; 
Zoroastrian,  402 ;  Hebraic,  433. 

Shamash,  345,  348,  360!,  363, 
367;  Joshua  the  Bel-Shamite, 
424;  horses  of,  424. 

Shammai,  school  of,  446. 

Shang  Ti,  Supreme  Lord,  God, 
231  f.,  235  f.,  262. 

Shankara,  monist,  208. 
Sharraph,  god,  422. 


INDEX 


619 


Shechem,  Lord  of,  417,  423; 
Gerizim,  443. 

Shedu,  44. 

Shema,  447, 

Sheol,  359,  442.    See  Hell. 

Shiahs,  Shiites,  474,  4/8,  480  f . 

Shin,  Shinron,  sect,  292,  297. 

Shingakuha,  Japanese  heart- 
culture  sect,  301. 

Shi  King,  224. 

Shingon  sect,  294. 

Shinto,  not  originally  ancestor- 
cult,  276  f.;  pure  and  mixed, 
Ryobu,  286  f . ;  as  monotheism, 
306.  See  Tao. 

Shirk,  heresy  of,  454. 

Shishak,  king,  313,  424. 

Shiva,  fertility-god,  originally 
storm  and  lightning,  174  f . ;  as 
man,  161,  176;  mothers  of, 
105 ;  children  of,  379 ;  sects  of, 
205,  209. 

Shotoku,  Prince,  285,  288,  292. 

Shu,  Chinese  classics,  224;  Shu 
King,  276. 

Shushi  school,  265,  304. 

Shvetambara  (white-garment), 
sect  of  Jains,  181. 

Sibyl,  531,  536,  538  f.,  543-  See 
Oracles. 

Sikhs,  hybrid  religion  of,  215, 
219. 

Silvanus,  523,  545. 

Simon  Magus,  563. 

Sin  (moon-god),  248  f.,  415; 
Sin,  Shamash,  and  Ishtar, 
361. 

Sin,  evil  and  wickedness,  507, 
55?,  564,  571,  573J  origin  of 
evil,  563. 

Sing  Li,  264. 

Sinism,  traits  of,  245. 

Sirens,  496. 

Skanda,  war-god,  207. 

Sky-god,  Slayic,  141 ;  German, 
155  f.;  Indie,  172;  Chinese, 
228  f.,  236;  Greek,  483. 

Slavs,  Slavic  religion,  138  f. 

Smith,  E.  G.,  15,  310;  Robert- 
son, 12. 


Smith-gods,  133 ;  Wayland, 
152.  See  Hephaistos. 

Smoke-sacrifice,  85,  92. 

Sneeze,  may  expel  soul,  32. 

Socinus,  Socinianism,  567,  588. 

Socrates,  503. 

Soederblom,  N.,  407  f. 

Sokaris,  330. 

Sol  Invictns,  539,  548. 

Solomon,  424,  440;  ring  of,  462. 

Solon,  501. 

Solstice-rite,  92,  175. 

Soma,  plant  and  moon,  171.  See 
Horn,  Intoxicants. 

Song,  hymns  to  gods,  in  Peru, 
118;  India,  see  Veda;  Babylon, 
349,  363;  of  Solomon,  434. 
See  Gathas,  Music,  Psalms. 

Sophia,  see  Wisdom.  Sophists, 
500  f. 

Sophocles,  religion  of,  503. 

Sorcerer,  453. 

Soter,  epithet  of  saviour  deities, 
559- 

Soul,  savage  belief,  8,  18,  21,  25, 
32,  34,  48,  51,  78,  87,  93,  121 ; 
as  breath  of  heaven,  65;  plur- 
ality of,  88;  departing  soul  ar- 
rested, 240;  Slavic  belief,  145; 
etymology  of  word  soul,  165; 
as  follower,  as  self,  165,  177; 
as  light,  178;  Buddhistic,  188, 
193 ;  Japanese  conception, 
277  f. ;  kvei  and  shen,  245 ; 
Egyptian  ka,  ba,  etc.,  311,  317, 
322,  327;  Zoroastrian,  ahu, 
daena,  etc.,  392;  journey  of, 
411 ;  Hebrew  breath  and  psyche 
443;  in  Plato,  503;  and  sin 

(q.  v.),  573. 

Spells,  carmina,  517. 

Spencer,  H.,  18,  29,  176;  and 
Gillen,  17. 

Spener,  P.  J.,  59L 

Spheres,  seven,  411. 

Sphinx,  317. 

Spinoza,  579. 

Spirit,  30,  34  f-,  48  f .,  55,  58,  76  f ., 
80;  guardian,  56,  81  ;  language 
of,  89;  group-spirits  of  Celts, 


620 


INDEX 


see  Fairies,  Mothers;  Slavic, 
142;  Chinese,  228,  243;  Japa- 
nese, 277  f .,  279 ;  Babylonian, 
349;  Arabian,  365;  Zoroas- 
trian,  378;  Greek,  495,  503; 
evil,  378;  and  baptism,  558; 
Great  Wise  Spirit,  377;  Holy 
Spirit,  566 ;  as  son  of  God,  561 ; 
as  female,  568;  origin  of 
Heavenly  Spirit,  461. 

Spring-festival,  366,  527. 

Srahman,  Suhman,  African 
gods,  30  f. 

Sraosha,  Faith,  384. 

Stars,  savage  cult  of,  96,  103, 
108,  112,  172,  564;  Chinese  cult 
of,  269;  Japanese,  284;  Egyp- 
tian, 322;  Zoroastrian,  386, 
388;  sacrifice  to,  404;  Greek, 
508;  angels  pelt  with,  463. 
See  Soul. 

State  and  religion,  533,  594. 

Stoics,  505  f.,  511,  542  f. 

Stones,  holy,  circles,  9,  22,  43  f., 
60,  82,  90,  109;  stone  as  sky, 
62,  411;  litholatry  before 
heliolatry,  113;  in  Peru,  stone 
as  home  of  Fire-god,  114; 
akmo,  142;  boundary  and 
guardian,  170;  Egyptian,  314; 
Arabic,  365;  black,  452,  540; 
Jupiter  Silex,  521.  See  Akmo, 
Ark,  Hermes,  Phallicism,  Mas- 
seba. 

Sufis,  suf,  460,  479  f . 

Suicide,  forbidden  in  Buddhism, 
180. 

Sukhavati,  Happy  Land,  198, 
297. 

Sulis,  123. 

Sulla,  543. 

Sultan  as  Caliph,  475. 

Sumerian  culture,  344,  364. 

Sun,  worship  of,  79,  90,  109  f. ; 
-dance,  91  f . ;  Celtic,  deasil, 
129,  133 ;  Chinese  deasil,  241 ; 
swinging  with,  91,  141 ;  horns 
of,  130;  Holy  Grail  form  of 
sun,  132 ;  Cuchutfin,  135 ; 
brother  suns,  92;  Aztec,  102; 


Peruvian,  113;  son  of  sun, 
in;  servant  of  God,  113; 
Slavic  cult,  I39f. ;  Lithuanian, 
141,  146;  Teutonic,  151  f.,  154; 
Indie,  172,  213;  Japanese, 
276  f.,  289,  306;  Egyptian, 
3141.,  327;  hymn  to,  329, 
333  f . ;  Babylonian,  360 ; 
Roman,  540,  548;  sun  and 
queen  of  Sheba,  462.  See 
Mithra,  Sol,  Vairocana, 
Vishnu. 

Sunna,  (Right)  Way,  Orthodox, 
Sunnis,  474!,  476!,  478  f., 
481. 

Suovitaurilia,  527,  534. 

Supererogation,  work  of,  561. 

Superstition,  outlasts  religion, 
548. 

Supper,  Last,  581.  See  Eu- 
charist, Love-feast. 

Supplicationes,  Roman,  prayer, 
entreaty,  thanksgiving,  540. 

Suras,  456,  464. 

Suttee,  suicide  of  widow,  30; 
116,  132. 

Svantovit,  as  St.  Vitus,  144. 

Svarog,  Sky-god,  141. 

Svastika  (svasti,  "is  well"), 
107,  244. 

Sword-dance  as  worship,  43. 

Synagogue,  447. 

Synergism,  574. 

Synoptic  Gospels,  552  f .,  556. 

Syria,  dea,  539;  Church  of,  569. 

Tabernacle,   425;    feast  of,  432, 

536. 

Tablets,  see  Ancestors. 
Taboo,   n,  25;   of  ground,  56; 

63,    67  f.;    Celtic    gessa,    135; 

-day,    361;    Semitic,    417;    of 

leaven,  420;   Roman,  517. 
Tacitus,  9,  121,  138,  150! 
Tagore,  Sir  Rabindranath,  219. 
Tahioh,  224. 

Talisman,  see  Fetish,  Charm. 
Talmud,  435,  447  f. 
Tamashi,  soul  as  wind-ball,  278, 
Tamate,  60. 


INDEX 


621 


Tammuz,  354,  360,  363 ;  Dumuzi, 

364;  422. 
Tanith,  539. 

Tantra,  Tantric  cult,  201,  564. 
Tap,   238,   248,   250  f.,   252,  326; 

Shen-tao,     Shinto,     250,     276; 

later  Taoism,  265  f. ;  Tao  Teh 

King,  249. 

Taranis  and  Teutates,  123,  125. 
Tartars,  239  f .,  262,  272,  278. 
Tatian,  564. 
Tattoo,  49,  63;  in  Peru,  115;  in 

China,  238;  Semitic,  417. 
Tauroktonos,  Mithra,  see  Bull. 
Taylor,  H.  O.,  342. 
Temple,  26,  64;  Mayan,  95,  97; 

Aztec,     103;     Peruvian,     115; 

Celtic,  124;  Slavic,  148;  Indie, 

170;    Chinese,   226;    Japanese, 

281,    288  f. ;    Egyptian,    330 f.; 

Babylonian,  345,  366;  Jewish, 

424  f.,      434  f. ;      Greek,     492 ; 

Roman,     526,     533,     539,     546. 

See  Pagoda,  Teocalli,  Tomb. 
Temptation,  of  Buddha,  195;  of 

Zoroaster,  374,  403;  of  Jesus, 

556. 

Tenaim,  448. 
Tendai  sect,  293. 
Tengu,  Japanese  spirit,  279. 
Tenri-kyo,  287. 
Teocalli,  105. 
Tera,  284,  288. 
Teraphim,  40,  361,  416. 
Tertullian,  412,   557,  561  f.,  566, 

570;     traducianism     of,     573, 

580  f. 

Teutonic  religion,  149  f. 
Tezcatlipoca,  99. 
Thanksgiving,  see  Gratitude. 
Theocritus,  Adonis  of,  364. 
Theodosius,  Emperor,  550,  572. 
Theopompus,  407. 
Thesmophoria,  495. 
Theosophical  Society,  220. 
Thomas  Aquinas,  576,  578;  and 

Maimonides,  449,  580. 
Thor,  8 ;  Celtic  form,  123 ;  ham- 
mer   of     fertility     (thunder), 

130,  156;  German,  155  f.,  161  f. 


Thoth,  310,  319,  324,  340. 

Thucydides,  501. 

Thugs,  stranglers,  religious  sect, 
42,  207. 

Thunder,  8,  91 ;  god  of,  95,  109. 
See  Thor. 

Thntmose,  king,  314,  324  f.,  332  f. 

Tiamat,  315,  350  f. 

Tiber,  Father,  538. 

Tiele,  C.  P.,  2,  4,  229. 

T'ien,  Sky-Heaven,  Fate,  236, 
262. 

Tierra  del  Fuego,  20. 

Tiglath  Pileser,  347. 

Tirthankara,  Jain  hero,  180. 

Titans,  497,  502. 

Titicaca,  lake,  as  divinity,  1 1 1  f . 

Tiu,  43,  155  f.,  172. 

Tlaloc,  96  f.,  99,  115;  frog- fes- 
tival of,  101 ;  Paradise  of,  105. 

Todas,  43. 

Toltec  civilization,  94  f. 

Tomb,  as  temple,  331. 

Tophet,  426. 

Torah,  440. 

Torana,  Torii,  282. 

Tornassuk,  77. 

Tortoise,  for  longevity,  243.  See 
Avatar,  Divination. 

Torture,  91. 

Totem,  20  f .,  29,  50,  60,  65  f., 
80  f.,  112,  126,  156,  284;  in  In- 
dia, 170,  175;  Egypt,  316;  not 
Semitic,  417;  not  Roman,  528. 

Trade,  gods  of,  American,  104, 
no;  Mercury,  etc.,  526. 

Traducianism,  573. 

Tragedy,  502.     See  Drama. 

Translation  of  heroes,  359. 

Transubstantiation,  560,  582. 

Trees,  sacred,  cult  of,  28,  60,  80, 
109;  of  heaven,  96;  oak  and 
mistletoe,  127;  oak  spirits,  129; 
oak  and  linden,  male  and  fe- 
male, 140 ;  Slavic  cult,  143  f. ; 
German,  158 ;  oak  and  oath  by, 
160,  166;  stone  and  tree,  170; 
holy,  in  China,  246;  in  Egypt, 
314;  acacia,  452;  of  life,  of 
knowledge,  352  f. ;  in  Arabia, 


622 


INDEX 


365,  366;  of  hell,  466;  Greek, 
495 ;  religion  as  tree,  see  Re- 
ligion. See  Druid,  Dryad, 
Grove. 

Triads,  Buddhistic,  192,  205  f. ; 
Vishnuite,  217;  Chinese,  270; 
Japanese,  307;  Egyptian  triads 
and  enneads,  319  f.,  340; 
Babylonian,  347  f.,  349,  361 ; 
Greek  groups  of  three,  486; 
Roman,  526;  Christian,  562, 
566.  Triratna,  three  Jewels, 
288.  Doctrine  of  Trinity,  560, 
571- 

Troy-circles,  133. 

Tuisto,  151. 

Tupan,  108. 

Tukaram,  religious  poet,  215. 

Tulsi  Das,  214. 

Turanians,  381. 

Twelfth  Night,  152.  See  Epiph- 
any. 

Twins,  sacrificed,  115. 

Tyche,  Fortune,  508. 

Tylor,  Sir  E.,  6,  18,  37. 

Ucchishta,  remnant  of  sacrifice, 

Vedda  form,  58. 
Uitzilopochtli,  103. 
Unction,  extreme,  569,  581. 
Underworld,     524.     See    Escha- 

tology. 

Unitarians,  567,  592. 
Unitas  Fratrum,  584. 
Universalist  doctrine,  564;  Uni- 

versism,  in  China,  228. 
Unkulunkulu,  ancestral  god,  not 

God,  28. 

Upanishads,  176  f.,  216,  512. 
Urabe,  diviners,  284. 
Usener,  H.  K.,  139  f.,  172,  428. 
Ushebti,     Egyptian     conception, 

328. 
Utnapishtim         (Parnapishtim), 

254  f-,  358. 

Vairocana,  Brilliant,  form  of  di- 
vinity, 289,  293,  298. 
Valentinus,  Gnostic,  563. 
Valerian,  Emperor,  565,  572. 


Vallabha  (calf,  darling),  sect  of, 
215. 

Vallee-Poussin,  L.  de  la,  196. 

Vampires,  146. 

Vanir,  gods,  162. 

Vardhamana,  see  Mahavira. 

Varro,  541. 

Varuna,  god,  27,  70,  172  f. ;  Aztec 
parallel,  194. 

Vasudeva,  title  of  Krishna,  210  f. 

Vayu,  wind-god,  172. 

Veda,  18,  50;  religion  of,  172  f.; 
Rig  Veda,  songs  to  gods,  9, 
28,  62,  66;  date  of,  171,  373; 
authority  of  disputed,  180. 
See  Atharva  Veda. 

Vedanta,  monistic  pantheism, 
178. 

Vedclas,  religion  of,  57. 

Vediovis,  volcano-god,  523,  540. 

Vegetarian  monks,  Aztec,  106; 
Indie,  220;  vegetarianism  in 
China,  272. 

Vegetation-spirits,  see  Grain- 
spirit. 

Veles  and  Vile,  Slavic  spirits, 
142,  146. 

Vendidad,  Zoroastrian  code,  371, 
374  f-»  390,  400  f . 

Venus,  537;  Celtic,  134;  planet, 
as  war-goddess,  361 ;  American 
conception,  as  page  of  sun, 
104,  112;  Babylonian,  348;  in 
Lucretius,  542. 

Verethraghna,  411. 

Vergil,  121,  536,  541,  545  f-,  548. 

Vesta,  Hestia,  523,  545 ;  Augusta, 
546;  Vestal  Virgins,  of  Peru, 
114,  116;  of  Ireland,  131;  of 
Rome,  523,  529,  531,  537. 

Veyopatis,-mate,  Slavic  wind- 
deity,  140. 

Vinaya  sect,  293.  See  Buddhis- 
tic literature. 

Vintius,  ventus,  123. 

Viracocha,   Peruvian  god,   U3f. 

Virgin,-birth,  26,  103,  375,  552, 
579;  Mary  as,  113;  as  cattle- 
goddess,  144;  in  the  Trinity, 
217;  mentioned  in  Chinese 


INDEX 


623 


monument,   273.    See   Mariol- 

atry. 

Vishnu,  174,  178,  205,  209  f. 
Vision,  of  Prophets,  433. 
Vitus,  St.,  see  Svantovit. 
Vivekananda,  221  f. 
Vohu-mano,  Good  Mind,  385  f . 
Volcano-spirit,  Araucanian,  109; 

Peruvian,  114;  Roman,  523. 
Volcanus,  fire-god,  538. 
Volsci,  121. 
Volturnus,  538. 
Voodoo,  30. 
Votan,  95. 
Vows,    40;    herem    vow,    417; 

Roman  vota,  532. 

Wahabites,  Mohammedan  sect, 
481. 

Waldo,  Waldenses,  584. 

Walhalla,  154,  157,  164. 

Walker,  Williston,  589. 

Walkyries,  165. 

Walpurgis,  152. 

Wanderers,  sects  of,  479. 

Wanga  magic,  30. 

Wang  Ch'ung,  Epicurean,  263. 

Wang  Yang  Min,  265,  304. 

War-chief,  as  god,  97,  no,  241, 
348. 

Washing,  33,  72,  86;  apotropaic, 
112.  See  Lustration. 

Water,  32;  cult  of,  86,  90,  98, 
113;  home  of  fire,  102;  Celtic 
water-spirits,  129;  Slavic,  142; 
ordeal  by,  152,  279;  bitter, 
417;  of  sky,  351;  in  Avesta, 
385;  of  life,  462;  Greek,  495; 
Roman,  holy,  546.  See  Bap- 
tism, Fish,  Fountain,  Muses, 
River,  Sea,  Taboo,  Washing. 

Weapons,  as  divine,  152. 

Welsh,  121. 

Wesley,  John  (and  Charles), 
592. 

Westermarck,  E.  A.,  130. 

Westminster  Confession,  591. 

Whitefield,  George,  592. 

Wicklif,  584  f. 

Widows,  90.    See  Suttee. 


Williams,  Sir  Monier,  2;  S. 
Wells,  227. 

Wind  or  Direction  gods,  86,  90  f., 
107;  colours  of,  92;  Aztec, 
103;  Indie,  172;  seven  winds, 
35 J I  good  and  bad  winds, 
496.  See  Vintius,  Woden. 

Wisdom,  divine,  Sophia,  440, 
508. 

Witch,  sacrifice  of,  239;  witch- 
craft, savage,  19,  39,  76,  83, 
140,  172;  Slavic,  148;  Moham- 
medan, 464. 

Woden,  155  f . ;  as  wind,  157. 

Wolf-cult,  142;  demon,  156; 
were-wolf,  165. 

World-soul,  see  All-soul. 

Worthy,  title  of  Buddhist  saint. 
See  Arhat. 

Women,  84;  cause  of  woe,  88, 
105,  170;  Paradise  of,  TOO; 
priestesses,  no;  German  view 
of,  wise  women,  150,  165 ;  in 
Buddhism,  189;  in  China,  In- 
dia, Greece,  242 ;  dead  women 
as  demons,  245 ;  in  Greek  re- 
ligion, 483;  Roman,  528;  in 
Mithra-cult,  412. 

Works,  good,  in  salvation,  586. 
See  Karma,  Opus  operatum, 
Supererogation. 

Wright,  W.  K.,  5. 

Wundt,  W.  M.,  69. 

Wu-tsung,  persecution  of,  273. 

Wu-wei,  sect,  250,  272. 

Wyrd,  166.    See  Fate. 

Xavier,  F.,  303,  305. 
Xenophanes,  500. 
Xerxes,  36. 

Yahweh  (Jehovah),  7,  415!, 
422;  Baal-,  425,  of  Sabaoth, 
432;  -nissi,  425;  Elohim,  El 
Shaddai,  435. 

Yaku,  spirit  as  ghost,  58. 

Yama,  172;  Aztec  parallel,  105; 
heaven  of,  175;  in  China,  270; 
Yima,  389,  396. 

Yamato-Damashii,  287. 


624 


INDEX 


Yanas,  schools  of  Buddhism,  q.  v. 

Yang  and  Yin,  228;  philosophy 
of,  247  f.,  263. 

Yashts  and  Yasnas,  375  f.,  384. 

Yazatas,  Izads,  3841. 

Year-demon,  12,  507.    See  Hera. 

Yezedis,   devil-worshippers,   33. 

Yggdrasil,  166. 

Yih  King,  224,  226,  237,  247. 

Yima,  see  under  Yama. 

Yoga,  Yogin,  discipline  of, 
178;  power  of,  201;  in  Bud- 
dhism, 188;  Yogacara,  200; 
Hosso,  293;  bhakti  as  Yoga, 
214;  Yogin,  Indie,  66,  208; 
Chinese,  266. 

Yule  log,  153. 

Yupanqui,  113. 

Zadok,  Zadokites,  425,  436. 


Zechariah,  434,  439,  441. 

Zeidites,  sect,  480. 

Zemipati,  -luks,  141. 

Zen  sect,  292,  295. 

Zendo,  297  f. 

Zeno,  500,  506. 

Zeus,  origin  of,  521 ;  German 
form  of,  156,  172;  Greek  god, 
^484  f.,  487  f .,  489,  497,  501  f . 

Ziggurat,  Aztec  form,   103. 

Zinzendorf,  Graf  von,  591. 

Zionism,  450. 

Zodiac,  lunar,  244;  divine,  508* 

Zoroaster,  Zarathustra,  religion, 
of,  371  f.,  552 ;  and  Slavic  cult, 
145;  and  Vedic  religion,  171, 
248,  372;  and  other  cults,  383, 
398,  405,  442 ;  literature  of,  375. 

Zulus,  25. 

Zwingli,  H.,  582,  585. 


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